Til I Come Marchin' Home
by Neftzer
Summary: Final of four. The Don't Series. "For whatsoever from one place doth fall/Is with the tide unto another brought/For there is nothing lost, that may be found, if sought." Losing someone you love is never easily done. Nor is getting them back again. See Story #1 in the Don't Series: Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree.
1. Hoboken NJ 2012

**A/N:** _Fair warning_ - don't bother to read the following without reading what has come before. Don't start here, this is Story Four of four. Go back, check out Story One: _Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree_, and we'll be glad to have you once you've caught up with the rest of us.  
>*The quote used in the story summary comes from Edmund Spenser's <em>Faerie Queen<em>.

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><p><strong>'Til I Come Marchin' Home<strong>  
>"<em>Don't sit under the apple tree, with anyone else but me,<br>Don't go walkin' down lovers' lane,  
>Don't give out with those lips of yours,<br>'Til I come marchin' home._"

**Hoboken, NEW JERSEY - Spring 2012 -** "I gotta say, I'm really not the best person to tell this story..."

The late morning sun came in through the smaller of the two windows in the kitchen, which had been only slightly renovated since the neighborhood had originally been built. The sink-side table was unused to being cluttered with much other than things that fit into the lazy susan that occupied its center, but today its surface wore everything from newspaper to copier print-outs, laptops and no fewer than six cups of coffee in various stages of being drunk.

"If you truly feel that way, then let's just think of it as having a conversation," the interviewer suggested reasonably, removing his half-glasses and squinting one studied eye at Alex Armstrong, thirty-three, where he sat across from him at the kitchen table of number 832, a brick two-story the perfect exterior match of every other house for five square blocks.

"Easier said than done," Alex replied in a nervous attempt at humor, "'just a conversation' - with your lighting crew, three cameras up and running, and all these damn power cords taped down to snake around the floor to the point I can hardly find a spot to rest one foot flat." He cracked a smile. "I can hardly get over you being here," he added, pointing out the relative celebrity of the man now interviewing him.

"Just...tell me about your grandfather," the half-glasses went back on, the grey head inclined toward its tablet to consult his notes, "you're named for him, after all."

"Hardly," Alex dissented, though politely. "You'd better fire whoever wrote up your background on this one if you think that. Grandpops' name wasn't Alex at all - it was Thomas, like yours - with no middle that we know of. I remember that from when they were trying to think of what to put on his headstone." His shoulders came up. "But again, I'm not the one to know, really."

"Lorrie," the half-glasses threw over his shoulder, beckoning one of his interns or assistants, "just one more time; you're certain this was well-vetted?"

"Checked it three times, Sir," presumably Lorrie assured him.

"It's just, Mom's not always herself anymore," Armstrong was muttering to himself, "we didn't know she'd go and take pneumonia after her hip replacement, and be unable to make this interview for you..."

"It's alright, Captain, there's a great deal of human interest to the story, coming at it from your angle: recently-returned-from-war soldier sharing the story of his soldier grandfather. If you're good to go on - " he motioned to one of the cameramen to indicate there was no need to stop filming.

"Yeah, no, I'm good. I mean, I'm nervous, but who wouldn't be - with you in his kitchen? Just...it's all hard to get my mind around. I've only been stateside about two weeks and here you," the sweep of his eyes took in the entire production team, "all are, I'm wearing make-up and you're saying you want Pops to be in your new book - what were you gonna call it again?"

"We're thinking: Guardians of the Greatest Generation. Focusing on the caregivers of those still living and the caretakers of others' legacies. How their loved ones' stories have affected and informed their lives."

Alex drummed his fingers against the table, unable to fully settle his nerves. He felt more high-strung than before a fire fight. At least then he knew what was expected of him. "That's good. No, really it is - I like that."

"So the house is yours, then?" the half-glasses renewed his questioning on an unimportant front, attempting to settle the younger man.

"Nah, it's Mom's. Me, I don't really have a place. I've been more or less active duty since that first summer after graduation. No need for more than a bedroom to occasionally crash in when I'm on leave."

The interviewer glanced about the kitchen, down the short hallway toward the front room and gesticulated with a stylus, "And this was also your grandfather's house."

"Yeah, I guess it always was. It's been with the family going way back."

He looked out, over the top of his half-glasses, pleased with himself. He had backed his subject into just the sort of question he had wanted to ask. "And what sort of a man was he?"

"Pops? Hard to say." Alex took on a reflective tone. "Kept to himself a lot, but an old man in a house with five loud kids - I'd probably shut the door to my room, too."

He added a prompt, a verbal nudge to get more. "He liked to fly."

Alex shrugged his agreement. "He ran a small charter company - Cessnas, mainly - out at one of the smaller airports. Mom used to complain he did it more to keep flying than to make any money, but always good-naturedly. I guess weeks would go by without him taking on any jobs. Kept it up nearly into his eighties."

"And did he ever talk about the war?"

"The war? _Hell no_. He didn't talk to us kids much at all," Alex shared without bitterness, "And me being the youngest, well, me probably even less. That's why I wish Mom could be here to talk to you."

"Your mother and he were close?"

"The closest he was with anyone, for sure. They were...it was like they had a sort of shorthand. In fact, it was a lot like what you see - if you've seen it - among soldiers on long deployments: understanding of situations and of what needs have to be seen to without the exchange of words," he rolled his eyes, dissatisfied with his explanation. "It would be so much better if she were here doing this."

The interviewer continued to ignore Armstrong's protestations. "Were you aware your grandfather, Thomas Carter, was twice nominated for the Victoria Cross?"

"No." An echo of disbelief entered Alex's expression. "Refresh my mind as to what that is?"

"The highest honor in the British military. His nominations did not, ultimately, result in the award. But still." The half-glasses slid further down his nose as he gauged the other man's reaction to this news. "To-date it has never been received by an American."

The front end of a chuckle came from Alex's chest. "That right? What would he have done to impress them so much?"

"Some recently declassified documents have come to light showing that following a stint where he was held as a prisoner against the Geneva Convention - _not_ as a proper POW - he managed to fall in with an elite forces squad of Brits. A shadow unit designated 'dead men'. Somewhere during that time - '43, '44 - he came into possession of knowledge about a German plot to assassinate King George. The information he provided MI-6 helped foil the plot."

"_Whoa_. Good for him."

"I don't suppose you have anything of his that might be from his time flying with Eagle Squadron?"

Here the younger man nodded his head with his first display of real confidence. "Well, I had that idea before you got here, so I dug out the boxes Mom stored of his personal effects, but, you know, to be truthful there's nothing here," he gestured over to some cardboard filing boxes in the corner, "that I can see that would interest you. Some old pictures of Mom, pictures he clipped from magazines of planes, and about twenty-five notebooks of his scribblings."

"Notebooks?"

"Yeah. That was one of the things he did when he went into his room and closed the door, I guess. I never really got a look at them until yesterday. But none of it's in English. Some French and German, I think - I took Spanish in school. And, I guess when he got older his mind was going, because the further you get into them he just starts scribbling gibberish."

"Gibberish?" the interviewer asked, standing to request permission to go over and see.

"Help yourself," Alex offered. "I don't expect they'd interest anyone beyond Mom."

After instructed, two production assistants began to rifle through the stacked boxes, withdrawing several notebooks, scanning them for passages and taking them over to the girl Lorrie for review. At a gesture from Lorrie, in a snap one was brought for the interviewer to examine. He looked down at it and smiled.

"This would certainly clinch it if nothing else - " he said, his voice awash in satisfaction.

Not following, Alex asked, "How's that?"

"Not gibberish, Alex," he asserted. "It's Russian. Likely pre-Revolution Russian. Which confirms what I said earlier, that you were named for your grandfather: Prince Alexsei Igorovich Komonoff - the boy who became Thomas Carter. No records of Thomas Carter exist prior to Alexsei and his family fleeing the Reds and coming to America with his mother and grandmother. Grandma didn't change her name, which helped us in the researching of him. They had lived a privileged life in the land of their birth, Russia having easily the most powerful aristocracy in the world at that time."

Alex did not have to announce himself for speechless, his face did all the telling. _Grandpops? A Prince? A Russian Prince?_

"Can you give us a little of what's in the notebook, Lorrie?" the older man requested.

Lorrie lifted the first of three she had on her lap, each seeming an exact, uninteresting copy of its twins. "They're pretty clearly all-but complete text of a memoir. Portions are in French and German - amazing penmanship throughout - nearly calligraphic - but the bulk is rendered in Russian. Here's something from early on; '_As a young boy it was generally expected that I would be taken with the notion of sailing, and while trips on the _Standart _were enjoyable and when he was well the tsarevich made an excellent captain, there was something about when the yacht was faced into the wind, trips when the ladies would retire indoors so as not to take a chill that I found so invigorating. Flight seemed the next logical step. The best way to keep feeling that wind against my cheek. And while for some years I was content to imagine being aloft in hot air balloons, their meandering journeys began to hold less sway over me once the true era of aviation was born, and I discovered it._'"

Lorrie dropped that copybook and reached for the next. "'_At times I think my life has been defined by women, or at least by the absence of men - the loss of a father, the death of a Tsar. When I opened the trunk of the stolen auto, what I saw was a Gypsy boy huddled inside, attempting escape. Did she really look so much of a boy in that moment? Or did my mind simply need her to be a boy - need to uncomplicate, however slightly, the relationship that would grow there? I already had one troublesome female unconscious by my hand in the front seat of the car, I did not need another. What I needed was an ally - though I was too self-contained to admit it._'"

"Can you tell what that's referring to, Lorrie?"

Lorrie squinted at the page, but it did not immediately offer up any answer. "Notebook's cover says 1943."

"So, something intriguing from his time on the Channel Islands..." the interviewer deduced.

Alex broke in, "I didn't know he was deployed in the Pacific theatre - "

"No, no," the half-glasses shook their head. "Small islands between France and Britain. One of the times he was captured."

Incredulously, "One?"

"He spent much of his time in Finlandﾒs Winter War imprisoned, no doubt trying to keep his status as Russian nobility hidden from his Communist captors."

"_Finland?_" disbelief. "He was some kind of a mercenary?"

Lorrie cut in, speaking up, this time without being prompted. She held up the first page inside the front cover of the notebook so they could all see the date.

"That's only about a year before he passed away," Alex offered. "He lived here at home until he died, surprisingly fit and healthy until his last breath. Mom went in one morning with his breakfast and found him where he'd fallen back onto the bed from where he had been seated, changing out of his pajamas. She always said it looked to her like he'd just taken off - his spirit flown right out of his body, his body blown back onto the mattress like a fallen leaf caught in the rear thrust of twin engines."

"He seems to be trying to give a picture of his family, here," Lorrie said. "'_Joe and Ken are very much like their mother,_'" he writes of the boys, "'_but I fear the youngest, Alex, is most like myself. And not only in his looks and fair hair, which Babushka would no doubt have doted on, as she did on mine. He is far readier to fight than his bigger brothers, and frequently over lost - even pointless - causes. But I confess in my age to envying him when the fire is truly stoked in his eye, in his youthful belly - what I know would be the familiar thump of outrage in his heart. Envy - for all that I know some of what such tempests will cost him. Such fires are forever banked within me now. As for him, one prays for such a boy turning into a man that the world will continue to reside in peace, but my own life has shown nothing if not that a man of war will find and pursue conflict at any cost, his own country, his own people, at making war or not._'"

The half-glasses pulled their head around to get a better look at Alex's reaction. "You had no idea of any of this?"

"I told you," Alex said, a smile of interested befuddlement on his face, "I was never entirely sure he could even tell us apart. The only person I ever saw him really connect with was Mom. Not that he was bad tempered with the rest of us, only...to-himself, even when he was at the table with us all. As for knowing about his service record - he never talked about the war (either one) - he never talked about the past." His eyes lit for a moment with memory, "Still, about five years after he had died we got a very strange letter in the mail. But it more added to the mystery rather than explained it. I remember Mom writing me about it." He turned his face back toward the boxes. "I think there's a copy of it in there." At the interested looks of expectation from his guests, he rose and shuffled through one of the boxes until he found it, and handed it over to the interviewer. "Lawyers were involved somehow. Mom didn't know how to feel about it, but in the end she _did_ take the money."

"Money?"

Alex inclined his head to encourage the other man to open the envelope and read for himself.

"'_To the person or family of Thomas Carter, service number 2265483236Z:  
>This letter has taken much time to come to you, and as such is true I genuinely hope it finds you in enduring good health. Upon my death (my husband having pre-deceased me) I have instructed my solicitor to locate and contact you, Sir, and to dispense with the bulk of my estate into your sole keeping - or that of your heirs, should it be necessary.<br>Our own son, Hans, died before my husband passed, and as our daughter has long been comfortably married she is in little need of additional support.  
>Our name may be unfamiliar to you (to your family), and we have lived under assumed aliases for many years now. However, along with that necessary change we were left with other, more pressing reminders of the war. Most notably my husband's recurrent and harrowing night terrors. You will have known him as an officer who served out the war on the Channel Island of Alderney, in particular commanding the Treeton Camp, there. I do not doubt your memory of him will be a decidedly unflattering one, as your name and even your service number figured prominently into his nightmares. I have little trouble recalling them myself as they were so often chanted and screamed in his sleep. It is because of this I have sought you out.<br>I am not so senile in my age yet not to know that monetary restitution can do little to repair that which it seems was taken from you during that time. Know that you have my (and my children's) deepest apologies and regrets - if not my husband's. Please think of me as,  
>Your obedient servant,<br>Gretchen Glueck Gisbonnhoffer (alias de Lisbon)  
>Santiago, Chile<em>'"

The interviewer seemed to come to a decision with the reading of the letter. He shook his head, as if to banish disbelief from it. "It now seems clear to me, Alex, that what I first thought would be a standard excerpt section of the main book is obviously far more than that. I'd like, if it's okay, to have Lorrie stay behind and catalog your grandfather's things - perhaps interview your mother when she is feeling more herself. What we've got here: the flight of Russian nobility when he was still a preteen, a distinguished flying career with the RAF in Eagle Squadron, imprisonment and escape onto the Channel Islands - this letter from his captor's wife, the monetary bequest and these notebooks of his memoirs? We're looking at something book-length just about him. Easily. So what do you say?"

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><p><strong>Cincinnati, Ohio - Eden Park - 2000 -<strong> The _Behind-the-Canvas_ tour group obediently followed their guide, Helen Cera, along the many corridors usually off-limits to guests of the Cincinnati Art Museum.

"We'll just stop in for a short moment," she told them, "and check out our conservancy department." She smiled down at one of the younger faces on the tour, a girl just over twelve attending with her parents, "which is where paintings are brought for cleaning or repair. As some of you may know, handling such art can be a tedious process. Larger works can take years to clean. Famous works in need of repair might even require the hiring of out-of-country professionals. Today we are stopping in to see the cleaning of Renoir's '_Brouillard - Fog - a Guernsey_', an oil on canvas with a rather exciting history around the middle of the last century."

She brought them to an efficient halt at the workstation of a white-headed man, magnifying glass strapped to his forehead, every manner of interesting substances surrounding him, multiple implements with which he could tackle the job of cleaning the canvas.

At the vibrations in the floor from the group's approach, he turned and smiled, waved a hand of '_hello_'.

"This is Daniel Heindl-Bonchurch," Ms. Cera introduced him. "Some of you may recognize his name from his own works, which are not unknown to collectors." As she spoke to the tour group, her hands moved in tandem, translating what she said to Heindl-Bonchurch so that in his deafness he might understand. "If he will agree, I will let him explain..."

Daniel set down the items that were in his hands, smiling to himself how the museum staff was so polite to have people on hand proficient with sign language. It was nice to be understood, even though it was unnecessary for him to be signed to. He had gotten by for decades on lip-reading, and managed well among those who knew him with his own, non-standard signing. Of course that had been before he had encountered a larger slice of society.

His hands began to draw in the air, telling the history of the canvas he had been specially contracted to work upon.

"Although this painting has a long history on the island of Guernsey, my home and birthplace, when the Germans landed in early July of 1940 to invade and occupy the islands, it was cut from its original frame," he signed, "and smuggled out with the evacuating children back to England for safekeeping away from the Third Reich and its endless lust for acquiring objects of art."

As usual he enjoyed the reactions and even the ensuing questions from the tour group. When they had gone he turned back to his work. No matter how many times he looked at Renoir's rendering of his home, its coastline sloping down to the sea - the fog often found there - he seemed to see into it more deeply. Today it reminded him that he had been away for too long. America had been enjoyable. He was glad he had come. The Downs was certainly lovely this time of years as well. But he found he was not in the mood for an English country house. No, this painting, this view captured by Renoir put him in the mood for a cottage. One with a still-poky chimney.

Yes, it was time to arrange for going home.

**1940 - late June - Guernsey -** Marion Nighten tried to avoid slicing the meat of her hand with the knife she was using to separate the canvas from its frame. Tried to avoid - Heaven help her - slashing into her father's Renoir. Thank goodness he had not had it hung in his bedroom. Perhaps he would not miss it much - or at all. It was hard to tell with his erratically presenting dementia. The children were to sail the next morning, a sudden decision by The States leaving little time to properly prepare. Children and elderly, those who might yet be left with Jewish heritage.

It was said the entire population of Alderney had already gone at the urging of their ruling body - abandoned their homes and possessions as if their island home were a ship going down, a movie house on fire, a lost cause.

She, herself, was stranded. Trapped by a father too ill to move, her own dedication to him for the past weeks as what was coming became more and more undeniable keeping her from escaping without him.

Today she had gone and sent a cable to London. It had taken hours to get a turn at the telegram office, everyone with money for such a task and with family or business interests to contact equally desperate to get information onto the under-Channel wires before it was too late.

She sent to her mother, care of Clem, at the Mayfair house. Moments later, exiting the office she was surprised to realize she had no idea what words or sentiment she had paid to have delivered. She could only hope it had managed to convey...whatever was appropriate in such a situation. Her deportment texts certainly had no entry to offer 'in case of imminent invasion and occupation'. War, after all, and situations unassailable by etiquette were not for 'today's young lady/tomorrow's woman'. War rarely came down to giving a spectacular and spot-on tea service, after all.

Coming back to Barnsdale House she thought to go for a ride. Everything seemed so futile at present, but as she walked into her father's sunroom and spied the familiar Renoir hanging there her mind filled with a multitude of news reports on Germans and their fascination with appropriating artwork. Stealing artwork. Although she had never felt any particular connection with this painting (it was a favorite of her father's - he traveled with it when returning home, packed it off to Lincoln Greene when he was there), she found quite strongly she had a vested interest in seeing the Germans did not get their hands on it.

And so she was unmooring it from where it had been stretched upon its tether a lifetime ago. And she hatched a plan to see that it was given to a child that was to be evacuated.

She rode for Mr. Thornton's cottage, certain that the older man would have more luck placing it than would she - where it would be obvious the canvas was valuable and the knowledge of such could complicate the smuggling of it off-island.

As she had reliably expected, Mr. Thornton willingly accepted the task.

"Are you making other arrangements as well, my lady?"

"Arrangements? What? To meet the boats?"

"No. I was only thinking..." he gave a sort of light clearing of his throat noise.

"Yes?"

"My lady," he began, "I have nothing here to interest the Germans. I've no daughter for them to compromise, no son for them to conscript. My property is so modest in size as to be known as nothing other than small." He gave a rumbly chuckle. "I've no fortune. I shall be well below their notice." His brows drew together, "But you - "

Marion waited, already knowing in her heart what he was soon to share.

"You will not escape their notice and their interest. Your property and fortune are large, your position singular upon all the islands. The larder at Barnsdale, the great house - is filled with just the sort of things a conqueror longs to pillage. To say nothing of your person, Lady."

She knew he only meant to caution her, and she valued him for it, her own father unable to comprehend what was to come, much less to offer her counsel about it. "The larder at Barnsdale is indeed well stocked at all times, with things as essential as flour and as frivolous as fine wine," she agreed. "And I think..." she only just now had fully birthed the idea, "there is no good reason at all that we ought leave such for the Germans to benefit by - I have made up my mind," she gave a strong nod to her head, "I shall stow what I can. A stockpile, what do you say? That we may make use of in future if needed, for ourselves or for the rest."

"There is the old windmill, my lady," Thornton agreed with a satisfied smile, "It is not far from here. You might go back that way, check in on it to see how it has held up. I have not been by there for many years," Thornton confessed. "But if you are going that way, perhaps you will take this and store it there for me - the only thing in my possession I can think of that might interest a German. It has been so long since I made use of it I cannot be sure it would even still work. Still, better to hide it than to hang for it." He guided her to a small shed behind his cottage, and opened the door. There, under several layers of sacking, and a good deal of dust, he revealed what to even her untrained eye could be recognized as a microphone and other amateur radio transmitting equipment.

"I will return with the wagon," she told him, turning to ride for Barnsdale and stable Gypsum so that she might fetch Dovecote and put her in harness for the coming task.

Quite suddenly it felt like she had rather a lot to do.

**...TBC...**


	2. The first of many happy returns

**A/N:** _I hesitate to mention it (as I hesitate to relive the horror of it) but when I originally posted the prior chapter of this story it would seem I uploaded an uncorrected copy. In fact, the very copy on which some of my notes of what was to come resided. It was a colossal blunder, but I righted it as soon as I learned of it. Because of this, if you were among one of the seventeen readers to encounter that problem/glitch, I encourage you to re-read Chapter One, and more importantly, to scrub any memory of that slim outline that made it online by my error from your mind forever._

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><p><strong>IMPERIAL COLLEGE, LONDON <strong>**ﾖ ****1998 - **_**Journal of Geologic Interests of the Empire **_**-** It was hardly an article to take anyone by storm, keep any of its meager readers from sleep that night. It had been printed quietly in a little-known scholarly publication (not usually circulated far beyond their own 2500-or-so alumni) funded by the Royal School of Mines. Hardly the stuff worthy of dinner conversation. Only, the discreet declaration that a recent expedition to acquire samples from the nineteenth century-abandoned mines on the Channel Island of Sark had been put indefinitely on hold, in the light of some discoveries made within the shafts there having nothing at all to do with minerals or rocks or geological findings of any kind.

In fact, owing to what had been unearthed, the entire project had been handed swiftly over to the neighboring history and anthropology department. Under their supervision the site would be excavated, any artifacts found catalogued and conserved. The surprising knowledge that, apparent even to a novice, people of very particular purposes had been inhabiting the mines (retrofitting the shafts to their requirements) as recently as the middle of the twentieth century would need studied; interviews with the locals would have to occur. Further research would be required. And funds. Always there would be a need for more funds.

For future updates, do be so kind as subscribe to the monthly flyer disseminated by the local history museum on neighboring Guernsey, which would be proctoring any future inquiries, funded locally by the well-respected Jodderick family trust.

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><p><strong>GUERNSEY - Barnsdale Estate - 1985 - <strong>Cate Pyle-Howard tried very hard to swallow down the European-standard bread and cheese provided for fast-breaking here in the communal breakfast room of her lodgings. (It proved to again be a local cheese, soft and fragrant in smell.) Tried not to focus on the lecture she was set to give later that afternoon. To focus on neither the (terrifying) act of speaking publically, nor the fact that was certain to dismay her contemporaries: that her three-year-old, carefully planned and half-outlined treatise on Hugo's exile to this particular island had fallen to bits shortly after she had landed and taken up residence at this very bed and breakfast.

It had been mere hours after she had first been allowed to review certain early manuscript pages for his _Les Miserables_ (his own, personality-filled annotations still visible in his corrections scratched upon them) that her course here had been so suddenly altered.

It had been easy enough to see upon her initial arrival that Barnsdale House had once been a tastefully opulent summer home to some '_veddy veddy_' upper crust British noble family. Unfamiliar as anyone from Minnesota might be with the aristocracy, even she could see that. It had been her own thirst for history that had first brought her to engage a room here here instead of taking up lodgings over one of the many cheery pubs in St. Peter Port with views of the harbor, which would have put her closer to where the manuscript sections were kept, and closer to the work she had, for more than eighteen months now, anticipated doing.

That was before she had awakened every morning to the picture.

There, in the bedroom she had been given to use as her own for the time she was here, was the picture. A woman and a stallion - at least she thought the horse a stallion - the 8x10 horizontal image in black and white 'painted on' with colors as had sometimes been done in the past. It was apparent the photo was meant to commemorate some victory of horse and rider. The lady cradled an engraved cup, the horse wore roses, the lady clutched more in a bouquet. Her riding jacket had been painted-in as red, her eyes blue to the point of being startling in their intensity.

But Cate did not doubt that even without the help of the put-on color those eyes would have proven startling.

Though it made no sense that it would do so, the image captivated her. She began to look forward to returning to her room, if only to re-examine it - to get lost within the border of its frame.

One day when her host, the house's proprietor, had stepped in to bring her clean towels and new soaps, he had caught her staring at it to the detriment of several sheaves of notes she was meant to be transcribing on her IBM Selectric so that they might be sent off for review by her Minneapolis thesis committee.

"Have I said, Ms. Pyle-Howard," he asked, "this was my father's room, you know?"

_Yes, she had recalled something of his saying that._ "But your mother," she countered him before fully thinking her statement to its conclusion, "you said she had been in service here -"

A roguish twinkle jumped into the eye of the fortysomething Mr. Heindl. She found herself noticing that not a drop of good looks were wasted on him, rather, he made good use of them all. Dark hair, a robust build. At twenty-five she could not recall having found a man his age ever handsome. In fact, she could not recall have paid any attention to a man of his age in such a way ever before. She would have thought they all seemed too much of her father. But somehow the sight of Mr. Heindl conjured suspicions of possible fatherly devotion within her not at all.

"Yes," he nodded to her blush of realized faux-pas. "That is right. But it is a room that has served many people in the ensuing years. _Even_," he lowered his voice conspiratorially, "an SS lieutenant." What there was of English in his island accent pronounced the rank, '_lef-tenant_'.

"No!" she exclaimed, her eyes straying back to the picture.

At her half-horrified response his Gallic slyness came through in both his expression and his words. "The sheets - and the mattress - have since been changed," he assured her, his joking smile a little more arresting than she would have liked to admit.

But even his present proximity could not deter her from getting answers about the photo. "And the girl, the woman in the photograph? She looks to have been of some importance around that very time." If she was not mistaken, the cup she held was engraved 1939.

"Indeed," he walked over to consider the framed photograph himself, lifted it up and took out his handkerchief to give it a polish. "She figures into it all. She is my aunt - my father's sister. And she was both that lieutenant's fiancee, and the Nightwatch."

Assuming he meant her for some war-era air raid warden or such, Cate asked, "What is a 'nightwatch'?"

"No, of course you will not know that," he announced as he replaced the picture, winking at it in conspiratorial salute. "There are few enough still living on the islands that recall it themselves, I've no doubt. But I should not be troubling you and keeping you from your work..."

"No," she had eagerly disagreed with his offer to leave her alone with pages of notes that now seemed to hold so much less interest for her at present.

Seth Heindl moved to reach the bell pull and ring (she presumed for tea). "Are you familiar with collaboration?" he asked. "With the Islander term 'Jerry-bag'?" he asked further, his eyebrows raising in the question, the animation in his face making it obvious that he was one who enjoyed both a good mystery and a good tale.

"Tell me everything," she had said, reaching for clean, un-marked paper, and her trusty Mont Blanc. After that, the notes came as swiftly as the masterful story he told could leap from his lips.

Which had brought her to this day: a public abandonment of her research on Hugo's Guernsey exile, and an impending presentation in its stead based on her recent delving into female islanders' collaboration (some necessary, some enthusiastic) during the Second World War; what it had done to the Guernsey bailiwick then, what troubles ensued due to it after V-E day - that ensued even now.

As for the Nightwatch? She had chosen not to mention the Resistance radio broadcast in her present paper. No, she needed more information. Another semester at least on these islands to better research her. No mere paper would do such a woman justice. No, with _her_ Cate Pyle-Howard felt certain she had the material for a doctoral dissertation on her hands.

And lots of very exciting days (and nights) of further research ahead.

* * *

><p><strong>Chicago, IL <strong>**ﾖ ****Kniaz Street Temple - 1972 -** Fourth-grader Tobin Abramowitz practiced what he would say to his father as to why he had no intention of writing the report assigned to him at that Tuesday evening's session of Hebrew School. Firstly, in his ten-year-old opinion, Hebrew School was no place to be taking on further homework - no matter what the new rabbi might say.

The rabbi had been a committed Zionist, his father had told the family, his interest in and his commitment to a separate Jewish state had not waned in the years since such had become a reality. So it should be of no particular surprise that he wished his students to be schooled in the politics and social issues, in the ordering of that nation.

But a written report? Tobin reached for the _Encyclopedia Britannica_ from the public library shelf. Who cared about the Yad Vashem? This Heroes' Remembrance Authority? Not quite the Justice League, now was it? Being declared 'righteous of the world's nations' did not sound particularly super-heroic to a ten-year-old.

It wasn't exactly being bitten by a radioactive spider, or when angry morphing into a giant green meanie. Heck, it wasn't even flying around in an invisible plane. 'Righteous' - definitely something unimaginative grown-ups might care about.

_Now, wait_. He ran his finger over the sentence again. What was this? Nazis? Non-Jews risking their lives? Saving people from...extermination? Now that sounded a little bit more Captain America. A little bit Superman - a little bit Stan Lee.

Okay, so maybe this wouldn't be so bad after all.

* * *

><p><strong>GUERNSEY <strong>**ﾖ ****Summer 1946 -** "Madame La Salle!" Louise heard over her shoulder shortly after she and Little Stephen had disembarked from the boat that had brought them to Guernsey, where they would wait for the Sark ferry to take them well and truly - finally - home.

She turned away from the flower stall she was marveling over to see who had called to her. Almost six years away from the islands, and only occasional trips to Guernsey prior to that did not make it very likely she would encounter someone she knew today.

"Why, Nurse Glasson!" she said, surprised to see one of the few people she might recognize on the large island, the nurse who had assisted her during several of her miscarriages, which had medically necessitated Stephen bringing her to the larger island's hospital for care.

"No, no," the other woman shook her head. "No longer 'nurse', only 'Ginny' now."

Louise smiled, pleased to see a woman that represented only generous compassion to her, and none of the sadness of those past lost pregnancies.

"You are come home, I think," Ginny took in the battered valise and smaller bag Louise had set down to free her hands to browse the day's selection of flowers.

Louise nodded. "And you?"

Ginny cast her eyes out to the Channel horizon, one hand resting nonchalant upon her hip. "Haunting the docks every day, waiting for my youngest to return."

Louise's gaze followed her line of sight. "Gone for a soldier?" she asked.

"Yes, the Army. And not due home until next Tuesday. But still something calls to me to check every day, lest he was able to secure passage sooner."

"Travel is complicated by so many displaced persons trying to get home," Louise commiserated, knowing first-hand that post-war wanting to get somewhere and actually arriving had become stickier and more crowded than ever before. British papers were filled with reports on packed-to-capacity railways, and food shortages - ongoing petrol rationing. Even the end of the war had not yet changed that.

"I see you have a young charge with you," Ginny noted, and then stopped, taking in Little Stephen's bright hue of hair. "No. Can it be?"

Louise nodded, unable to hold in a smile of pleasure.

Ginny matched it with a beaming one of her own. As mother to three sons she could not help her heart from leaping with joy at the realization that after so many disappointments Madame La Salle would now know a similar happiness. "And does he know?" she asked, eagerly, after Reverend La Salle.

Louise cast her eyes down. "It hardly seemed the thing to announce in a letter - after five years of letters that could not get through to be delivered."

Ginny nodded with a woman's understanding. Then her nursing past came to the forefront. "And you had no...complications?"

"Only in being apart from my husband," Louise assured her. "We passed a tense and lonely war working a farm in Scotland. And you?" She looked toward the shopping streets and saw what was formerly Lotte Glassman's beauty salon marquee was now re-painted to read 'Glasson's'.

Ginny gave a small smile tinted with grim. "A necessary change of vocation, I'm afraid. You will hear things," Ginny advised her, her voice at a pitch less likely to carry. "About me, about many of us left behind. Do not always believe them for the whole truth." She lingered over her statement before rushing on. "Even so, with the return of peace my shop has lacked in customers. My son and I have decided to resettle on Alderney. To see what sort of life we might make among the ex-pat islanders, and others, who will return there."

Still taking in everything around her, Louise commented, "We heard so little of the islands while we were away - I hardly know what to think upon being returned. It is wrong to expect nothing to have changed, and yet - on Sark -"

"Yes," Ginny tried to put a brave face on things for the sake of Madame La Salle, "perhaps you will find the alterations to be less jarring there. Though they had their own scandals - their own moments of embarrassment. During the final days of the war even the most highly ranked Germans sought out islanders to bribe into hiding them from the imminent arrival of the British - and their obviously already set-in-stone arrests for what they had spent the last five years bringing down upon us, on the prisoners they had transported here from Europe to work and die as their slaves. In this matter, Sark was seen by them as choice real estate. Better than the Minotaur's labyrinth."

The hardness, the bitter in Ginny's voice, as it washed over into her stance spoke directly to Louise's heart. "God comfort you in your memories, Mrs. Glasson - Ginny," she offered her, the only appropriate response she could think to give.

Dismayed at her own, unintentional response - not wishing to discomfit Madame La Salle, Ginny worked to shake off the gloom that seemed, now, so often to undercoat everything. "May you find Reverend La Salle well," she said. "I would say 'happy', but I can think of no man who would not be so in light of the news you bring to him." She smiled and ruffled a hand through Little Stephen's hair before making her goodbyes.

* * *

><p><strong>SARK <strong>**ﾖ ****Creux Harbour - **Although for days her impatience at her trip home had been nearly impossible to curb, Louise found herself, once on Sarkese soil, combing Creux Harbour for the boat with the freshest and most promising catch rather than making a bee-line for the La Salle tenement. She was determined to prepare and eat Channel fish tonight, and she meant to have the day's best on her table. In doing so she did notice that the slip usually appointed to their boat (piloted in Blind La Salle's stead by young Dick Giddons) held an unfamiliar vessel. It gave her a second's pause, but five years was surely a long enough amount of time for Stephen to have plausibly arranged to have it docked elsewhere.

She had arrived on the ferry that also brought the small island's mail, and its docking had brought with it a small flurry of activity. Once she had her fish, her arms now also filled with flowers she had purchased from Guernsey's harbor-side stalls, she found she had no hand to offer Little Stephen as they walked together. She was turning to a stall that sold rope (as well as cleverly knotted rope bags perfect for some of her parcel overflow) when she caught a flash of a blue wooden wagon wheel, ringed in metal, as it made its way up toward the shopping street and where the mail would be brought and held for distribution.

She nearly called out Dick's name before her eyes settled on the broad bulk of shoulder that sat the driver's bench. Despite Stephen's rich cooking there was no way slender Dick Giddons could have so altered, no matter the interim passage of time, though for all that those shoulders were quite broad, like all Islanders the frame of the man they belonged to showed signs of undernourishment, consequence of half a decade of meals missed and meals left wanting. Even a year after liberation.

"You! There!" she called to those shoulders, grabbing Little Stephen's hand so that he could keep up as she chased after the wagon. "You're driving my wagon!"

The wagon came to a halt and the owner of the shoulders turned around.

Even in his lost-bulk state he was a man of substantial size. Perhaps not as giant as Goliath, but the fierce look on his face warned one not to doubt the aptness of the Biblical comparison. He wore a full beard which carried more grey in it than did the hair on his head, and grew in only patchily on one side (the other side thickly robust in comparison), betraying that underneath its covering sat a significant amount of facial scarring from a past accident.

The ferocious and untamed look of him set her back on her heels for a moment, but she did not back down from her shout.

* * *

><p>Iain Johnson turned 'round in his seat to see who it was shouting along the track-side. It proved to be a smallish woman, accompanied by an even smaller boy child.<p>

"This is La Salle's wagon," he offered her freely. "I drive for him."

"Good," she told him, with a crisp nod of acceptance at his explanation. "Then you may drive me as well."

"Yes, I..." he stalled out, willing to drive her wherever she need to go out of courtesy if nothing else, but as usual somewhat tongue-tied around members of the gentler sex. "I am bound for the mail, as I expect a letter from some friends -" It had been too long since Djak and Wills' last posted letter, "and then on with this load of grain to La Salle's tenement." He had stepped down to help her up into the seat beside him, and toss the small lad lightly onto the sacks of grain behind. "Where may I drop you?"

The whisp of a woman looked up at him, her eyes registering some emotion he could not quite puzzle out. "At the house will be fine," she replied.

They drove on a ways as he tried to decipher who she might be. La Salle had occasional visitors, of course, but generally on-island. Could this be some cousin of his? He noted the slender golden band worn on her left hand, added to it the La Salle-reddish thatch of hair on the boy.

He was still pondering on her identity - too backward to simply ask it of her - when he picked up the post. Thankfully there was a letter addressed in Wills' dependable script, bearing exotic stamps, and cancellation from the city of Prague. Arriving for La Salle along with a Guernsey paper was another letter written in the (to him, now) undeniable hand of Madame La Salle, which he had memorized long ago from reading her pre-war journals aloud to Stephen once Djak (whose job it had often been) had left the island in pursuit of finding what might remain in the world of her family. Out of deference to Madame La Salle (a woman more real to him than the lady with whom he now shared the wagon's seat) he placed that envelope on top of the bundle of post, which he asked his new passenger to hold as he climbed aboard to drive them on to the farm.

She gasped at seeing the envelope.

"Howzat?"

"I have beat the mail."

He could feel nervousness descend upon her. "Beat the - ? Then _you_ are Madame La Salle?" Strangely, he felt in an instance as though he were meeting both an old friend and an auspicious benefactor. With a degree of uneasiness, but also of delight, he broke into laughter. "We have had two letters from you, Madame," he assured her. "...since the island was liberated, but never yet one telling us when you might manage passage back to us." He blushed more than a little red at his unintentional usage of 'us'.

"With so many displaced persons trying to get about these days it can be hard to travel," she offered in explanation. "I brought us back as soon as could be upon our release from the WLA."

John gave a nod of understanding, and jerked his head to indicate the boy. "And who is the little man?"

"This is our son, Stephen," she said, not lingering over the announcement but letting her eyes convey a look of importance at it. "He likes you," she smiled, "I can see it. He has spent all of his years in the North - in Scotland - and he's feeling more at home now hearing your accent than I think he has at any other point on all our journey, -"

"Iain Johnson," he provided his name for her, "but most just call me John."

"John," she said, setting her face into the wind off the sea, her hands still holding the delayed news of her already accomplished arrival.

He was greatly relieved to find that she was not a frantically chatty woman, and though they passed the remainder of ride to the farm largely in silence, it proved a companionable one.

* * *

><p>"There are no photographs of you at the house," John had mentioned, by way of his not knowing her upon sight.<p>

"There wouldn't be," she had politely assured him. "Stephen has no need of them, so I took what few there were with me." Originally she had consistently referred to her husband as 'Reverend La Salle', but hearing his own, friendly way of speaking about her husband, she soon enough devolved into using the familiarity of his first name as well.

When they had arrived, he watched; the closer they got to the farm and the farmhouse how intently her eyes took in everything that they surveyed, looking, he was certain, for the changes time and hardship had brought. Neither a rock wall nor a tree branch seemed to escape her review.

"Could you," she had asked of him, "could you show Little Stephen the barn? While I -?"

She did not have to finish the sentence. Of course a man would like to reunite with his wife in private. And of course his wife would wish to first speak to the father of her child _about_ the child also privately. And no request of Madame La Salle would he, Iain Johnson, ever refuse.

The little lad strung along behind him as he led him on a tour of the barn nearest the house.

"So, you're to be 'Little' Stephen, are you?" he asked him.

"My father is Big Stephen, Mama says," the lad answered, showing the Scots in his thick words. "But he canna now be half as big as you, can he?"

John fought back a chuckle. "He is big in other ways, laddie," he assured the boy. "He is one of the greatest men I have ever met."

"He canna see, you know," the little man chatted on, both feet on the bottom railing of a sheep stall. "He won't be able to see me." He placed his young elbows on the next rail up. "I think I shall like being invisible. Do you like it?"

"Look here, my man," John took the child's question to heart, "I have never felt less invisible than when I am near your father. He can see right to the very heart of a person. And when he sees you he shall think you better'n ice cream come a Sunday afternoon, or warm cider on a chill island even."

Little Stephen, in his childlike way giving no greater weight to John's more serious words than to his lighter ones, moved on to the next stall. "Have you a pig barn?"

"What's that?"

"Are there any pigs here on your island?"

"Pigs? Aye, there be something of pigs here."

Giving an exaggerated, five-going-on-six-year-old sigh of relief, Little Stephen declared, "Good! I should be sorry never to eat pork again."

Realizing for the first time the little lad's total unfamiliarity with what his life was about to become, with what his new home might or might not provide him, John swallowed down a hooting laugh, and spoke to allay any further fears. "Aye, pork a-plenty when wished, and Father Christmas, too, shall have no trouble findin' yer stocking though you've moved it to the farmhouse chimney, here."

The child smiled in reply, and John let himself take a moment to reflect that, actually, Blind La Salle's gift (and a fine, smart and healthy little gift it was) had arrived somewhat early this year.

* * *

><p>Louise La Salle felt like she would never stop looking - stop seeing - everything she loved around her so sharply, the smallest patch of grass seemed like an old, dearly missed friend.<p>

She found herself not at all surprised when the kitchen door opened from the farmhouse. In her head, in her memory, she could all but hear her husband, from where he had been within, announcing to her as he so often had in the past that something - he did not know exactly what - in the wind, in the air's scent, its elemental balance, had changed, and he would just step outside to see what it was.

On a day such as today, she certainly had reason to hope that her return might have charged the air of Sark with something - altered its composition - as surely as her being returned here found it (blessedly) re-configuring hers to the very bone.

She could not tell just how he looked at first, the bright coming-on-afternoon sun to his back, putting him in shadow. The gait was his own, was recognizable to her.

A cloud shifted, and he came into focus.

Like the man John (though she had not seen him pre-War), Stephen had lost weight he had yet to fully gain back. His clothing still hung ill-fittingly upon him (a shaming sight for the husband of a nimble seamstress). Shockingly, his short-cropped hair now belied his age: it had turned completely, prematurely white. Her eyebrows raised in alarm at this, as though opening her eyes wider would gift her with additional insight into his alteration. Yet nothing else of his appearance or physical self telegraphed frailty of any kind.

In her impatience, her need to see more of him, she threw any inhibitions into that Sarkese wind, and made her small stride into two of itself to reach him before he had put more than fifteen feet between himself and the house.

She channeled all her energies into meeting up with him, her voice - words of any kind - remained locked within her. She was only feet - shoes - on grass, only motion, deliberate in its arrival, in its long-imagined destination.

"No," she heard him whisper, saw his lips contract to himself in disbelief, "it isn't..."

Arriving opposite him, the wind pulling at the hem of her frock, her hands balling into fists, not knowing how to initiate contact with him after so long.

Her voice, her words, her greeting, now ready (she thought), abandoned her.

"Speak, Wife," Stephen asked her, only his elevated senses able to confirm her presence standing opposite him; her scent, the rate of her breathing, some other unquantifiable something that to him represented essentially her.

Her right hand reached up and toward the fraying, irregular edge of his shirt's worn-with-age collar, where she rolled it between her first finger and thumb. "Has there been no one to tend to you since..?" In the asking of it her mouth stretched against her will into that of a trembling lip, brought her whole consciousness to the cusp of unstoppable tears.

His hands found hers and he pulled her to him, her body alongside his. Immediately the sensitive pads of his fingers - his way of seeing - found her face, where she found her own lips impeding his progress with kisses. She did not know who was crying. Her face was wet, his hands were wet, both their bodies shook like a tree caught in a summer storm. But a single tree, a unified trunk without division.

She felt him drop to the earth and followed him there. "Praying, my husband?" she asked.

His hands enclosed hers in their mendicant folding and he answered her; "For all the others who will have no such sweet reunion this side of Paradise. In deepest thanks for ours. In thanks for - everything."

She could not know yet that his personal list of thanks included thanks for Gypsies and fallen-from-the-sky Russian Princes living as mere airmen, the sons of English earls, and Scotsmen with no clear intentions of again setting foot on Scottish soil any time soon.

The sight of him, the sensation of him was such that she could not spare even a glance over her shoulder to see how Little Stephen and his ad hoc guardian were faring. Her husband's white hair and irregularly slim appearance both shocked and fascinated her. His eyes, clouded and emote-less to others rested in their sockets like two old but faithful friends. "I have not come alone," she began, her words returning to her, her fingers moving to learn the changes in his face - the new valleys, the familiar rises - in the same way that he used to 'see' hers. "I have brought you your son."

* * *

><p><strong>PALESTINE - nation of Israel - 1956 - <strong>The interviews were being held as discreetly as possible. It had been something of a challenge to strike just the right chord in the rooms outfitted to receive those able to make the trip and have their version of events of what had occurred in the Schleswig-Holstein extermination camp - specifically the aid brought by one Freyga Tuckman, Gentile - preserved.

The war, for these people - former prisoners, those previously marked for death - was hardly a distant memory. The world was recovering, of course, but to those who had been held by the Germans, it would take a sight more than the passing of a mere decade before entering a darkened room stripped of furnishing save a table, chairs and recording devices, would not evoke memories of interrogation and torture.

No, just the right tone for these interviews must be found. For if eyewitness accounts could not be expeditiously collected the Yad Vashem (still in its infancy) would find unpleasant complications inherent in carrying out their appointed work of recognizing selfless heroism in extraordinary Holocaust rescues and aid of their people.

**...TBC...**


	3. Welcome back Goodbye

**LONDON ****ﾖ ****Heathrow Airport - 1956 ****ﾖ** Lord and Lady Bonchurch stood among a cluster of others at the gate to which Royal Army Private Seth Heindl, the only son of Lady Bonchurch (though NOT, gossipy Londonites might point out, the child of Lord Bonchurch), would arrive from his flight.

Heindl was not the only soldier returning to his country that day following the end of British action in the Suez War, but it did seem as though he easily had the largest crowd of personal well-wishers immediately on hand.

Eva (born Heindl) Bonchurch - now elevated to the status of 'lady' - tried again to settle herself. No other among those present could possibly be more anxious than her to see her son. He was, after all, all she would ever know of children - know of creating life and passing it on out into the future. For not the first time since the Second World War's end, her mind returned to the day she had been told as much.

Liberation had flooded the island and the islanders. Most were excited to again have a chance to get their lives back in order, return to what they had known of life pre-War. To aid in the doing of this the Red Cross had marshaled several off-island doctors to see to medically evaluating the population entire - free of charge. Happy to be able to be examined, but hesitant to speak candidly about her medical and social history with a local practitioner, when her turn came and she was taken back, Eva especially requested just one of those off-island doctors.

She was handed over to Dr. Battley, the physician from neighboring Sark, now dividing his time between the two islands in the wake of the high numbers of the population needing medical help. Though she knew Mr. Miller had had reason to know the man she had never, herself, met him.

At her request, a complete physical ensued.

As the doctor removed his surgical gown and she was dressing, he turned to her and asked about her (well-known locally) sexual history during the war.

She had been expecting such an enquiry. "It is so well published about here - and always was - that it hardly seems a secret, but I was the Alderney Kommandant's best girl during the Occupation." As usual, she freely admitted the fact without trace of guilt or shame.

Battley grunted. "Then I certainly understand your desire to see someone off-island regarding your care. What..." he searched for the genteel term, "_measures_ did you happen to employ during that time?"

She gave him the local name of the potion and poultice her mother, Hilda, had mixed for her to use to ward off both disease and pregnancy.

Quickly, almost before she finished her sentence, Battley let fly several choice Serquiaise curses, no thought to present company. "And how much did she tell you about it?"

"Only that it would keep me safe."

He gave a staccato scoff. "Well, in _that_ at least, one can say she only half deceived you."

She waited for him to finish.

"What she gave you - for all five years I am guessing? - will kill anything that gets in its way. It will also harden and scar. I regret to tell you, Miss Heindl, just as you will never carry any of your Jerry lover's children - you will never again carry any of your own. Your mother - judge her as you will (even I have heard stories of her spelling homemade cures) - has seen to that."

It had been a long trip home in the wake of his assessment, but as Eva took step after step bringing her closer to the cottage, she found it more and more difficult to hold any anger or even regret against her mother's actions. _What would she have said had Hilda told her the side effects? Would she have chosen differently?_

She was convinced her affair with the Kommandant had safeguarded her family throughout the Occupation. Had kept safe Seth, the child she _did_ have. Her mother knew this. It would have been foolhardy to risk a pregnancy with such a cruel and twisted man. He certainly would no longer have wanted her when expectant, and she mayn't have been able to bring herself to disappear a child already conceived with other, violent methods.

_No. It was done_. It was neither fair nor logical to view choices of those years through the prism of the liberated, world-at-peace present.

After all, she would not be the only person scarred from that time - despite her scarring's being invisible to others.

Now, years later, standing at Heathrow she tore her eyes away from the windows' prospect to look down to her foot and saw again Mitch's cane. It was a true thing of beauty she had found hand-carved among things left behind in Mr. Thornton's abandoned cottage. It had always struck her with surprise that the old man had managed to hold off using it for firewood during those leanest of times. She was glad of it now, though as always saddened by Mitch's need to depend upon it so.

It had not always been thus. No, in the days initially following the war he had recovered to a large degree, and managed to walk well enough without assistance. Even now, when they were on-island he could get around. But trips to London - trips away from the islands - always seemed to see the need for it being brought out by his man. She never knew whether the need was one of pride - of not wishing to display the irregular gait required for him to walk when he was out among his peers, or if there was something genuinely problematic about the London air, the barometer, the change in climate (or mindset) that re-crippled him so.

And she could never look at her husband's leg without seeing it as a medal he had won for her. In the keeping of her - despite the fact his winning of it had been entirely mis-construed and unnecessary. He had not known that at the time. No, it had been the single most heroic thing she had ever witnessed, and had she not been deeply in love with him (though never having spoken of it) at the time, she was certain to have fallen so once he had taken that bullet for her.

When anyone inquired as to how he was injured, Mitch would simply offer them the vague, 'in the war'. _Yes, that was how she had gotten so very many things in her life - in the war. Her husband, her condition, her extended family - a future for her son._

Eva took a short roll call of those present: Mitch, herself, Claire and Lord Clem (she still had to actively prevent herself from referencing him as 'Master Clem'). Claire's twin nephews, the Stoker boys - entranced and in some level of thrall to Seth, particularly in wake of his military conscription. Even Lady Miranda, impeccably seated in a chair Clem had found and had carried over for her by one of the airline stewards.

The bulk of the Heindl family remained on Guernsey, awaiting their turn to welcome their nephew when he traveled the last leg of his journey.

Eva squeezed her brother Daniel's hand, where he held it, standing next to her. His studies were going well, so well they saw little of him, even in the wake of his being named Mitch's heir to Bonchurch. _Who could have predicted that Daniel would one day be raised nearly as highly as his little, fatherless nephew?_ The war had given that to her, as well. The opportunity to hope (in its wake) for what had indeed come about: a meeting between father and son, legal documents drawn up to denote Seth as sole heir to the Nighten name and estate (an additional occurrence of which she had never dreamed, much less plotted).

It had been hardest on Claire, now Lady Nighten, of course. To learn of Clem's illegitimate son, another woman - a commoner and stranger (a former ladiesmaid!) - giving him what his chosen wife had not been able to. It had led to the rider in those documents: Seth was not to take the Nighten name, nor live as proper heir until after Claire's death, and any chance for legitimate children to be born to her and her husband had well passed.

In spite of this courtesy, it had been long years since all involved had known there was to be no possibility of this eventuality. Lord and Lady Nighten would remain childless (as would Lord and Lady Bonchurch). Seth would bind both couples together, his necessary schooling taking him away to London and his father, but his home always being on the island, with his mother and Mitch. His life never to be one of want, of desperation, never again to live and make compromising choices as they had had to do during Occupation.

Her son was the glue for all of them, this Eva knew. Just as she knew that without the loss - _the death_, she forced herself to acknowledge - of Lady Marion she would never have seen a day like this, all of them together, genial, happy.

Certainly she had had good reason to hope for something of a decent response to news of Clem's having fathered Seth when she was first able to contact him post-liberation. Especially as Mitch had agreed to break the news to him in person. Knowing her son's father and his family all her life, she knew him to be a gentleman, no shirker of duty. She did not expect (and indeed did not wish) a renewal of his one-time affections for her, but knew this did not preclude possible feelings for his son.

She had not realized - none of them had known, had reason to know - that Clem was far from ignorant of his son, the photograph of the young boy that had strangely gone missing from the Occupied Heindl cottage on Guernsey having made its way into his father's uninformed hands. It was to be the last message Lady Marion had ever had the chance to send.

Of Clem, Eva had always been fairly certain. But Claire (who had met and married Clem mid-war), and Lady Miranda were other matters entirely. Had the loss of Marion (especially for the former Lady Nighten) not occurred, ensuring that family - any family, no matter how backwardly gotten - became to the Nightens more precious than ever before; without Marion there was no telling what sort of reception Seth and she (no longer just as Eva, but now as mother of Clem's child) might have received.

Reflecting on Marion brought her mind back to the war then, and the war now. Back to the fearful notion that now, even Seth, had a more than passing experience with such a conflict. That her son - still teenaged - was now, courtesy the Suez conflict, a military veteran.

Eva thought further on Marion, thought of Sir Robin who would have loved to be present as well to see his nephew, had his own duties in the war (or whatever secret government whatnot he was now employed in) kept him engaged and away. Marion. How she wished she could thank her old friend and former mistress, tell her of all that she, Marion, had given her - all that had happened: her own, happy ending. Happy future.

She did not try to stop the tears from coming.

Misinterpreting them as being for her long-away son, Mitch brought an arm up around her coat to hug his wife's shoulders. "There, there, Eva darling," he said, always looking for the good. "He is nearly down the jetway now, and soon enough straight into your arms. I shall duel with any present who attempt to embrace him before you." In an effort to make her laugh, he gave a commanding stamp of his cane into the airport's flooring.

"Yes," she agreed, not telling him the full truth of it, finding (easiest thing in her world to do) a smile for him. "Yes. You are right, of course."

* * *

><p><strong>NEW YORK CITY - 1954 <strong>**ﾖ** After nine years he should be used to it by now. The nightmares, the waking as if he had some task on hand, something to do at two o'clock of a morning.

After three years of trying to sleep through it beside him, certainly _Mrs._ Allen Dale was used to it. Used to bringing up the notion of twin beds to him as he sat bolt-upright, flop sweat pouring off him like water off a drowned man. Time was, her cold cream would melt off her face from the heat of fear, of desperation, escaping from under his skin - and her proximity to it.

Always cattily bringing up the sleeping arrangements. And in doing so she would plunge him into an entirely actual nightmare, ongoing daily (and nightly) in their smallish downtown flat. Two cats they were, tied together by their tails. In a flat that would not reasonably accommodate twin beds. That struggled to house the Murphy bed they pulled down of an evening from out of its shallow closet, securing its safety chain on the lower leg to a metal ring bolted to the sixteenth floor of their building.

It made no sense to him - shellshock (he had no other word for it, and certainly no medical diagnosis of any kind referencing it) existing in the mind of a man who had spent the bulk of the war without so much as a pistol to call his own.

At such times of late he thought he would gladly strangle her for only a kind word, a moment in which she shut her mouth and quieted her nagging to walk over to the hot plate and set the percolator (or the kettle) on the boil so that she might offer him the comfort of a cuppa. Only a cuppa. Surely a marriage, no matter how broken, should be enough of a bond to provide even that smallest gift of succor.

"I have not slept in a half a decade! Not slept the night through!" she whinged and stormed, hair teasingly falling out of its carefully placed rolls.

"That would be _five_ years, Floss," he ploddingly corrected her math as he worked to catch his breath, "not three."

Good looks, impossibly platinum hair, lips that never seemed to lose the red-colored come-on of lipstick even in the wee hours - and legs, oh, those legs. None of it could dress-up for long what had grown to lurk behind it.

"My _name_," she spat at him like knives, "is Florinda - and you were well into giving me sleepless nights before you made a gift of that sorry excuse for a ring!"

"Can't see as a little lost sleep should matter much to a former dancer," he quietly but bitterly referenced her life of working nightclubs before they married.

"Give me a kickline any night of the week and I'll sell it like nobody's business, You. Give me back to Radio City before my hips got too broad and my tits half-fell." In this negative assessment of her physical attributes, she exaggerated. Always her way to demean herself in the hopes of inspiring compliments. "No wonder you scream other women's names in your sleep!"

His breath caught. What could he have said? "What's that, then?"

"Enough 'bein' funny'," she harshly mocked him, the nightmare he had just endured. "You say you dream of the war, but you didn't go to war with an all-broad squadron, did you, now?"

"I warn you, Floss," he snapped back in quick defense, "you're getting on me wick."

"'Zat what you told your Jerry master?" she niggled at him, bringing up unsettled events of the past month. "Flunky that you were? I think you forget sometimes I got me a reputation to uphold. _I_ danced a featured number in a twice-weekly patriotic review during the war. _I_ did my duty, don't forget."

Under his breath, "as if I could." He continued, full voice. "I told you. She was wrong, Mrs. Horetz. Never met the woman before in my life." But his protest against the accusation was hollow, him not able in the moment just-removed-from-panic to infuse any of the old Allen persuasion into his words.

"So you didn't chauffeur some German muckety-muck around during the war? Lick his boots?"

The old woman had denounced him as the Kommandant's driver to the better part of the neighborhood. Fortunately in her unreliable, and then frightened mind she had subsequently developed a regular habit of calling out various other men as her former Nazi tormentors, and for the most part no one took the elderly ex-pat Guernseywoman seriously.

"Doesn't matter now," he said, letting his irritation for the moment fall away into mere exhaustion.

Florinda's never-very-bright with intelligence or insight eyes narrowed on his in the half-light. There was no need for her to inject any pettifoggery into her tone, the gravity of her words was enough. "She knew your name."

"So we'll change it - keep us from getting further confused with this other, collaborator chap."

At this suggestion, silence fell, crashing between them like a piano from a third-floor window.

"Change my name again?" she asked quietly, referencing her dislike at having, upon their marriage, to surrender her stage name. "What did you do in the war? You've never even told me your rank. Surely even you Brits have ranks."

Annoyance returned. "Do you like getting those overseas cheques in the post - the mail - every other month? If you enjoy that particular privilege as Mrs. Allen Dale, you'll ask no such further questions," he warned her. MI-6's special pension for Unit 1192 delivered in his name was contingent upon his maintaining his silence and protecting what remained of the covers of the unit entire. Including his own, which had never yet been broken.

This time she tried calm sincerity. "Were you that German's driver?"

He replied with grim truth. "I can't say more."

She reached to snatch at her nightdress' matching robe. Her earlier nastiness again flared up. "_This_, like you," she referenced his present lack of gainful employment, "isn't working. If I change my name again, it will be back to what it was before we met."

"You're leaving?" He was not sure how to react to this. "Leaving me?"

"We can't stand each other, Allen," she needlessly voiced, her eyes rolling ceiling-ward. "We'll kill each other, sure, if we go on trying to live in such close quarters. _I_ don't want to live to see the day you sock me in the kisser, or the day I grab for the kitchen knife. I mean, half the time I don't even understand what language you're speaking!" She grabbed for a headscarf to cover her curlers. "We're miserable, and it's my fault. You were a three-week affair, tops - and I knew it. I had no business thinking I could stretch that three weeks of fun and sex into a lifetime." There was almost a tinge of apology behind her eyes. "I'm going to Sue's for the rest of the night. She'll let me have her couch." She walked to the flat's door, headed for the cross-hallway lift.

"What name did I call out?" he asked after her, wanting to know before she went, his gaze to the sheets.

"Ellen," she told him as she double-knotted the belt of her robe, "Mary - and Annie," she finished. "Always Annie." He could not tell if what he heard in her voice was sarcasm or a begrudging blessing. "Maybe wherever she is, she's the one that could make you happy."

* * *

><p><em>Eleri. Marion. And Anya.<em>

The eternal trifecta of women he could not save. Time, for the rest of the world, he knew, moved reliably clockwise. Seconds to hours to weeks to years. But for him it had abandoned that path. Instead, time for him had become sand in an hourglass that was continually, erratically shaken, the motion perpetually rearranging each grain, each point in the past, colliding it with the present. Wrecking (it seemed, it always seemed) any possible future.

His nightmares - his war - had sunk his marriage, and he drowned, breathless, in their wake.

* * *

><p><strong>GUERNSEY <strong>**ﾖ ****Barnsdale Estate ****ﾖ ****Spring 1944 ****ﾖ** Something about the particular way in which the door to Lady Nighten's former suite of rooms was opened caused his senses (even in his sluggish, sleeping state) to spike. The blackout curtains, which just as effectively blocked the sun from coming in as they did the electric lights from shining out, impeded his ability to gauge the time. The fireplace, toward which the chaise lounge on which he lay was faced, was now showing but embers where before a warming blaze had been built-up that indeterminate time ago.

Though he could recall nothing specific of dreams, he woke exhausted from his rest, the throb in his wounded head perhaps diminished due to the medical ministrations of Ginny Glasson, his vision at least now stable so long as he didn't jostle himself or attempt movement.

A rustle of posh fabric and the sound of unworn shoe leather upon the floor identified his visitor as the Kommandant's daughter before she could speak to be known. A dampness clung to her, and as she knelt, her back to him to stoke the fire he was surprised to note that her hair was wet from a washing, an unexpected twist in her arrival back to the estate following dinner with her father at his Alderney manor.

When she turned away from the fire and toward him, he saw the surprise register in her eyes that he was already awake.

"The house is asleep?" he asked her, his throat dry, but only predictably so following a long slumber.

She nodded.

"Then slowly, as much and as detailed as you can remember, tell me everything. Brass tacks."

"Shall I start with the dinner?" she asked, and he heard the break in her uncharacteristically flat voice, and even in only the firelight saw the numbness of shock within her pupils.

"Have they drugged you?" he asked, not having accounted for this in his plan for her of falling ill and seeking out the Sarkese doctor.

"Yes," she agreed, "but I - I have not taken the second draught."

He felt her shiver across the air separating them.

"But you are not watched?" He questioned her further. "No one is tasked with nursing you through the night?"

She shook her head. "The draught was to make me sleep well into the afternoon."

He allowed himself a single wary glance toward the door.

"The dinner is not important right now," he prioritized. "Start with what is most important first. We shall get to the rest in time."

Her tongue came out to wet her lower lip, her teeth biting same as her forehead contracted, telegraphing uncertainty. "A man came to the Dixcart, as you said he would were I to ask the doctor for Alex La Salle. He had been fetched there by another man the doctor spoke with, but whom I did not see."

"Go on."

"I did as you said. I told him why you were not there yourself. I told him everything had gone 'pear-shaped'."

"And you told him that he must find Lady Marion," he prompted her, impatient to learn the outcome.

"No," it was little more than a whispered exhale.

"What?" His question matched hers in its barely-spokenness.

"I could not. I - it was the man, as you expected, the man from the windmill the night Lady Marion had been shot. The very man. He wore the same clothes, even. I could mistake him for no other. But he looked wild. Wilder, even, that he had that night. He could hardly keep to one place as I told him your message. And seeing him I could only think of how he had looked that night, holding her, cradling her in his arms, an expression on his face that.."

He cut her off. "Why could you not tell him, Ellie? It was the most important part of the message. That he had to find her - to stop her...to save -"

"Because _I_ found her," she interrupted him.

"You found her? Found Marion?" He began to let out a chuffed laugh, but cut it off when he brought his eyes back to her face, saw the flash moment in which she stifled a gag. "No. What is it, _Fraulein_? What is it you could not tell him?"

"My father's appointed driver -" she had been speaking to him in English, but here her mind broke from that, and her words reverted to the comfort of French, a place where she felt safer, even if the words still betrayed her fear to him of what she had to say. "_Un soldat_, stopped on his way to the Alderney docks at the Treeton Camp. He left me alone in the car for some time. I -"

"No," he said again in hollow, knee-jerk disagreement.

"I got out for some air. I found -" she seemed to compress, her body entire momentarily weighed down upon by some great heaviness. "They are dead. Both of them. I saw it - I could nearly have touched them with my hands."

It was so hard to hold his head still. Closing his eyes was the only mode of expression left to him. "Both?"

"Joss Tyr," she answered, "he was with her, there. On a pile. A pile of -"

He could no longer hold off the shaking (if only ever so shallowly) of his head. "But how had she come to be _there_, on Alderney?"

Her shoulders lifted lightly, barely higher than they might at an intake of breath. "I do not know. There is much afoot tonight. An attempted escape from Sark, it was said at the Dixcart. A surfaced enemy U-boat, a fire fight. The large windmill on that island on fire - lit-up like a Roman beacon - though no one knows why. They had," she recalled the hunk of flesh missing from Marion's arm, her eyes winced closed. "They had started to cut her into pieces."

And now it was his turn to shudder.

"I don't want to live, Mr. Allen. I don't. Not if I am to be somehow related - grouped together with such monsters." Her mind returned her to the sight of Marion and Tyr. "They never hurt anyone. They only...oh, I want to die!"

Had he not already been, of necessity, immobile at the time, Allen Dale was certain this news - the worst possible in the situation - would have frozen him so. Marion, the Nightwatch, _Oxley's_ Marion - dead at the Jerries' hands. Able to be done-in so by his own fault, his own shortfall, as the knot on his painful head told him.

He wanted to be able to sit up, to get his arms around the now-sobbing girl he had sent off to do a soldier's work, to make himself useful to someone in this moment - in the face of complete and utter uselessness when confronted by such finality. But he could not accomplish even that.

Eleri was kneeling beside him, as she had done throughout the telling of her story. He reached out to her, managing to keep his torso still and steady, his touch letting her know it was alright for her to collapse into his chest, to bury the sounds of her sobs there.

With his hands, the only moveable parts left to him, he patted and stroked at her back and hair, at one point bringing her fingers to his mouth so that he might kiss them in a gesture of comfort, as her cheek and forehead were too far distant from him.

Again, he could not judge how long she wept, only that in time her sobs lessened, and having worn herself out, she slept where she had collapsed. Over the rise and fall of her head (consequent of his own breath) he watched the dimming fire. She had not been able to tell Robin. He could not blame her in that. It was a task beyond simply daunting. It was the sort of task one could only hope one's life up until that point had educated one well enough to pull off. He trembled at the thought of it - at the thought of what Ox might be running off to do even now, in his ongoing ignorance of the present situation.

Eleri Vaiser, the Kommandant's daughter, had not been able to tell him Marion was dead. Therefore he, Allen Dale, the Kommandant's driver, a soldier under his authority, must find both the means and the physical strength by daybreak to do so. Such news could wait no longer than it already had.

As he heard the great house begin stirring about them, caught the echo of the occasional servant's step in the passageway, Allen shook Eleri awake.

"You cannot be found here," he warned her, her eyes dull with remembrance, with sleep that had not been truly restful. "And you must - you must - act as though nothing has happened. As though you saw and know nothing of what you told me last night. For your own safety. You know _nothing_ of Marion here or there or in-between. You have been ill, that is all. You are not responsible for your behavior yesterday." He gave her hand a squeeze. "Keep to your rooms."

"And you?" she asked.

"I must do the same," he replied, making his first attempt to sit himself upright.

"But first," she asked, trying to find a place where her hands might best aid him in his movement, "you must go and find Alex La Salle?"

"That is one way to put it," he agreed to her use of the only name she had been given to define the task at hand.

The present look of her face as she studied on him, he thought, must be the exact embodiment of his physical pain, the perfect reflection of it. "Do not worry," he told her by way of comfort, though his words lacked in conviction. "It will be alright."

"It will?" she asked, hope trying to spark on the fringe of her expression.

"No," he answered her dully, managing to stand from the chaise without dropping to the floor. "That is a lie."

**...TBC...**


	4. Parents and Children

**GUERNSEY – Barnsdale Estate - 1948 –** "Mitch," he heard his mother, Lady Sophie Miller, call from the raised stone promenade alongside the main house.

He had been out walking the gravel labyrinth - a newer addition to the grounds than its companion, the maze, which he actually rather preferred; boundaries, barriers to the unpredictable openness that was the park now preferable in the wake of the past years necessitating covert movements, constant searchings for spaces to lurk and to hide.

He abandoned the gravel intricacies of the well-raked circular path and returned himself to the promenade, where his mother sat alone, preparing to take tea.

"What was that marble, there, Mitch?" she asked him as he seated himself and she began to pour. "Why has _it_ not been replaced by another piece, or removed? It is irreparable, yes?"

She referred to a particular statue one encountered on one's way toward the hedge maze which had been damaged by the Germans upon their unwilling exit from the property three years past.

"di Rossi's _Janus_, Mother," he informed her, rambling on, "Roman god identified with doors, gates, and all beginnings."

"Shown as two-faced, duplicitious. _Yes_, I know — I am not entirely absent of intelligence where the arts are concerned, Son. An uneasy marriage of opposites," she commented. "What a strange remembrance to keep about."

"I don't know," Mitch politely disagreed, serenity in his tone, looking out toward it, seeing how the retreating Jerries had managed to hack a cleft into the dichotomous head, though not nearly rendering it in twain. "Seems about right to me. That it would be here, haunting _this_ place, this very park." His eyes now strayed to the horizon beyond the broken statue, beyond the small woods, where his memory would tell him the outline of a long-fallow windmill ought to occupy the Barnsdale property — at its far-edge. It had never been visible from this level of the house. Even so, were he to climb to the roof (with his stiff leg, an unlikely journey for no other reason than to reminisce and sightsee) he knew he would not see it there. Barely one stone of it now rested upon another, barely the outline of its cellar foundation would still be visible, and that only when standing all but directly upon it, the structure having been destroyed, its foundation filled-in almost five years ago.

Lady Sophie, as was her way, was already flitting ahead to another topic. "Where is Eva, and Aurore? Where have they gotten off to? If Aurore is anything like her husband — why, you would not believe the trouble the Earl had with that one during the war. Always slipping away, trekking off to find this or discover that. There were days when all one could hope for was to keep him indoors, never mind his lessons."

"Still, you think she is enjoying her holiday here?" Mitch asked after his mother's present charge: the fiancee of one of the island children who had been boarded by the Earl of Huntingdon during the war. Clement, almost fifteen when the Earl had taken him in, had at present been called to Jersey on his family's business, and had asked Lady Sophie to entertain his young fiancee while he was away from St. Peter Port. Lady Sophie, unsurprisingly, had invited the girl straightaway to Barnsdale (where she herself was at-present holidaying), and was in the process of showing Aurore (insofar as the islands might have it to give) the time of her young life.

Mitch reached to accept the saucer and cup his mother extended to him.

"I have had a letter," she said with some significance.

"From home?" he asked her, more intent at present on the tea cakes on display for the taking than on the concerned look that had spilled onto her face.

"From Sir Robert," she answered. "Mitch," she seemed to switch away from the letter to an entirely other topic, "I think it is marvelous that Clem has been so generous in accepting Seth, in allowing Eva (and by extension, you, her husband and Seth's step-father) the run of this house forty-five weeks of the year. But Darling, you are away from London too often."

A shallow frown line creased his brow. "You do not say Bonchurch?"

She scoffed lightly and indulgently. "Bonchurch - thanks to your uncle, thanks to his brilliant staff and steward - would run by perpetual motion, whether you were present or not. It has never in _my_ lifetime been in need of its Lord's personal tending. I daresay it never shall be."

"Very well," he returned her to her original assertion. "I am away from London too often..."

She took an audible breath, as though readying herself to take the initial plunge in a sea bathe. "It is Robin. He is frightening people."

"Really?" It sounded to Mitch the start of a mother's speaking against a particular prank or some such nonsense. "How so?"

"He is _not_ himself."

Without regard to her tone, something persisted within him to jest. "Shall I then ask, 'who is he?'"

Lady Sophie allowed herself a light sigh. "In polite company he refers with great regularity to 'his wife'. A marriage which, of course, few know little if anything other than gossip about. He has been known to strand a partner out upon the floor; when certain songs are played — he simply stops dancing. He no longer drinks, leaving gentle people to believe he is doing so alone, in secret and undoubtedly — as the darkening skin tone about his eyes suggests - in excess." Nothing in her posture indicated that she took any enjoyment out of relating this list. Rather, she was all concern. Anxiety over the present troubles of the man raised so closely with her own son. "He has been seen in lower class pubs and public houses in very unfashionable parts of the town. And it is well-known that he has rather eccentrically commissioned a miniature of Cleopatra's Needle to be erected adjacent to the family's mausoleum at Kirk Leaves."

Mitch winced a bit at the last part. Better, probably, not to tell her the great regularity with which Robin had been at haunting the _actual_ Needle when last he and Eva were in London. "None of these accusations seem to constitute a crime, Mother. You say you have a letter from the Earl? Is it he who has written to you of his worry over these new proclivities?"

She was not quite irritated by his determinedly flippant stance on the matter. "Of course not. The Earl would never speak — or write — so. But I know he is, that he is gravely saddened at the arrival of his son's long-desired sobriety, and distressing form it has taken. I know any parent would be."

Mitch thought to attempt putting her mind at rest, at least on the accounts which he could to do. "Well, as for the 'lower class pubs and public houses'? That is where an officer would go to meet ones mates. Not all men serving His Majesty are welcomed past the door at the Savoy, Mother. Besides, you must recall — MI-6 thinks he's fit."

"MI-6, my darling boy," she laughed, somewhat bitterly, "would take on a baboon if it fit their purposes. As _you_ well know. Go to London. Speak with him."

"You don't understand, _Mother_. I'm not the best person to speak with him about the time on the islands — much less about the loss of Marion." His eyes fluttered as he shook his head. "You do not understand."

"What, I don't understand about the loss of a loved one? I may be an old woman now, Mitch, but if you trouble yourself to recall I was not so very old when Father died — but I had _you_ to distract me. He has only MI-6, and whatever clandestine work they assign to him." It was her turn to shake her head. "He should marry and give Sir Robert grandsons."

She could see the protestations already beginning to form in her son's mind. She spoke to halt them. "You _know_ that I never attempted to mother Robin when, as a boy, he most needed it (and would have been most averse to accepting it) — and I am of no mind to take on such a task now, but tell me you will endeavor to gauge the fitness of his mind — in person - and I will rest easy."

Mitch could not control the clenching of his jaw, though he hated to be so contrary to his dear mother's wishes. "And how did you respond after Father died and uncle repeatedly entreated you to consider re-marriage?"

Lady Sophie looked wistfully into the distance for a moment. A light breeze troubled at the floral accents on her wide-brimmed sun hat. "Well, he ought be glad that I didn't. (As should you.) Had I obliged him and done so, where _would_ that old bachelor have gotten himself an heir?"

* * *

><p><strong>August 1943 – Engagement party of SS Lieutenant Geis Gisbonnhoffer and the Lady Marion Nighten – Grounds of Barnsdale -<strong> There was no moon that night. Even had it not been for the shielding height of the hedge maze, Unit 1192 was unlikely to be seen unless they wished to be so.

The next hour drooped heavily with portent, whether dark or light still waited to be revealed. For a numberless time, Mitch Bonchurch re-grilled Allen Dale on his identity for the night's party.

"You are her cousin, you will say, if asked."

"Close or distant?" Allen teased, as always trying to combust Mitch's impatience into temper. "Close enough for a kiss-hello?" he cheekily proposed.

Royston laughed, catching himself before his chuckle crescendoed too dangerously.

"_Dis_-tant," Mitch let his speech clip in reply. "Now recite, again, her parents' names and titles, and her brother's. Their country seat. Three other, seemingly unimportant facts about Lady Marion that could solidify your identity if questioned..." He broke off, ignoring Allen as he complied in answering as bidden. "Here now, Robin," Mitch interposed, "you are never one for that task — let me —"

"Come now, come now, Mitch," Robin insisted as he played valet to Dale, using the back of his fingers in attempt to brush the fabric resting upon Dale's shoulders. "The cut of the coat is not entirely shabby, though it is at least a decade past its fashion. The shirt is only just-useable to be certain, but the coat covers it sufficiently." He stepped back a moment to consider. "If only his arms were not _quite_ so long..."

"I can try it out if you like," Wills Reddy offered himself for the task.

"You're not a good enough talker," Royston dissented, John agreeing by way of a grunt. "See how easy it was for me to get a word in edgewise, there, Reddy? You're talk is so considered anyone can easily cut you off. Do it me sleep. But Dale, here," he grinned, "gets talking like a house afire and you can't tell the front door from the back, your dog from your pocketwatch. 'S what this operation needs."

"Don't worry yourself, Wills," Allen jumped in, stemming Royston's praise of him. "I've more than enough pockets to fill for you with all manner of pinchings from the big house."

"Yes, well, all of that is abundantly true, Roys," Mitch agreed, glossing over the other man's speech, and ignoring Allen's offer of appeasement in the form of stolen vittles. "But he is _not_ doing a very good job carrying off these clothes. Shoulders back! And Robin, that bow knot — it is, as always when you tie it, a travesty. See if you can't do something about it, or I shall."

"Ye-es, Mitch," Robin replied with a chuckle at his own wit. "But if you were dressing him up, who, then, would we find to so eloquently dress him down?"

The others had to stifle their laughter at this, which on any other occasion would have registered as uproarious, the sight of Mitch prissy as a mother at her son's confirmation, trying with all her might to tamp down a cowlick, tidy his cuffs.

In all this, how Mitch envied him, Robin displaying that trait he had — that always surprising trait — showing no reservations here amongst the men, none of his doubts regarding Marion and loyalty visible, much less implied by any action or lack of action on his part. There was nothing at all to show what he was feeling about encountering Marion after so much time...and so many issues stood between them. He seemed perfectly confident.

As confident as he might before any other party, where _he_ would have been at having himself dressed by his man, _his_ clothing perfection, _his_ accessories enviable.

The musicians playing in the house beyond could be heard through the fabric of the blackout curtains. Mitch took a moment from his antic panic to sigh. How he missed music, missed the gentility this party was meant to display. How he longed for the trappings, the gentle ceremonies of civilization. A return to decency. Him, a dead man, longing for a return to what had not-so-very-long-ago been his life.

* * *

><p><strong>ENGLAND – Kirk Leaves, Earl of Huntingdon's Country Estate - 1953 –<strong> It had been a brief illness, but fatal in its intensity.

So shortly ago had it been discovered as lurking in their midst it had barely incommoded even the most assiduous of the Manor's domestics. The Viscount would have it no other way. Master Robin would handle all of the Earl's personal needs, Wadlowe had apprised the staff.

Five days past Master Robin had even gone so far as to remove the Earl to the small honeymoon cottage that occupied the woods to the north of the park. A cottage so modest in its size as to be outstripped by the dimensions of the manor's dining room. A cottage that contained no electricity or kitchen. The previous butler, Idle (upon whom Wadlowe did not care often to reflect), had apprised him once that prior to the Countess of Huntingdon's death that particular outbuilding had been known simply (and affectionately) as 'Delia's Folly', before taking on the more nostalgic title of 'honeymoon cottage' — for it had indeed been designed by the Earl and built expressly for his new bride.

An earthy place, large of stone chimney, rough plank floor, ceiling beams from which herbs and flowers could be dried, all in a single room housing a bed just big enough for two, a set of chairs and an understated table.

But it had been the young master who had early on staked it out as his own, insisting upon playing in it as a young child (as he had when his mother had lived), then as a boy taking to spending the warmer nights within it whenever the fancy struck.

It was a locale to which the Earl himself rarely returned, as though it were part of his property already ceded to his now re-found heir and only son.

_Why_, Idle had tsk-tsked when originally outlining the building's use, _any meals not wishing to be taken cold had to be (what inconvenience!) sent, run out there, from the Manor's kitchens._

But there was not much of eating taking place in the cottage these days.

"You _must_ eat something," the Earl had pleaded with his son early on in the five days, when he was still talking with some regularity. "Do not frighten me," he asked, patting his hand on the blankets and mattress below him, wishing to punctuate his point. "Not as you did in those early days of your return to life."

"No," Robin agreed with his dying father, giving a resigned smile. "When the footman is sent to us I shall direct him to have Wadlowe bring me what might be needed for a stew pot, and I shall eat the vittles, and you the broth."

His father coughed. "You confound me. You know of cooking?"

"I can measure water, cut meat, and peel a variety of vegetables. For those of us not over-discerning, such skills produce an edible — if not inspired - stew." Robin Oxley replied, feeling the chair he occupied slowly creeping closer toward the bed that contained his dying father.

Ever-closer by the day, though he could not recall deliberately moving it to be so.

It did remind him of those early days of his return to life. Liberation, when it came, had found him very ill. He retained little recall of the time spent on the Navy ship that had returned him to England. Little understanding of the passage of time until the moment he woke up and found the Earl, his father, standing at the side of his bed in hospital, no chair in sight. Simply, standing. The space of a breath — nothing more — between them.

He fell asleep and woke under his father's gaze, had his bandages changed, was fed — first by IV and then by mouth — his face shaved, all as his father stood. Had his father eaten during that time, those long days? Had he dared even step away to perform the smallest of tasks? The nurses had kept Robin shaved within an inch of his life (originally the only way he had to gauge that they did, indeed, expect him to live). His beard had been taken from him, and yet the man, his father, who taken up the watch standing at his side seem to have inherited it, as with each waking Robin was able to see the stubble begin to form into undeniable, unimpeded beard.

Then came the day he had opened his eyes to a chair. It came from nowhere, this chair-of-all-work. It became his father's bed, his smoking chair, his dining room chair, his reading chair, and one particular night, Robin noted, his _prie-dieu_. Its proximity was originally quite close, occupying just the spot in which his father had stood, but as the days wore on, the weeks turned, Robin noticed it grew more distant as his health improved. By the time he was not only allowed, but willing, to feed himself, there was a marked distance between his bed and the retreating chair, which now butted up against the private room's wall. But rather than take that distance as a chasm (as he once would have), he realized the space to be but a shocking few paces.

And so he would, after all, live.

Live to watch the Earl die. To find the chair _he_ occupied to be intrinsically, anciently attracted to something within his father, some base element calling to him more powerfully at this time than ever before.

He had never sat a death vigil — though he had seen men die in the war. Men that died either because of the severity of their injuries, or because they were too well-trained and loyal to inconvenience an army that must be ever advancing, be on the move, by having the bad taste to linger in their parting from this life.

This vigil, these five days, they had taken on the character of a lifetime entire, the two of them here, in this cottage, the lighting mere candles, the fire in its hearth. Medicine could do nothing further for the Earl, the comforts available treatments could offer brought with them a cloudiness — if not a level of complete insensibility — that he had rejected. And so the Earl and his son had found there was nothing left in this instance that modern conveniences could afford them, and discovering this to be the fact, they broke with them entirely. And sought out the common ground that had always brought them closest together: Robin's mother, Delia. And so naturally, both had agreed to walk the path now set before them in the privacy of this spot, her beloved honeymoon cottage.

On day two, when strength for words was still with the Earl, Wadlowe had arrived at the cottage door, informing Robin there were visitors come to the main house.

"See them back," he encouraged the butler, upon hearing their names. "It is two of your war children, my lord," he told his father. "A Pippa and a Perry."

Wadlowe brought the young lady and young man back, presenting them at the folly's only door, and they passed some fifteen minutes in the company of the Earl — surprising Robin as he haunted the cottage's corners at how relaxed and congenial his father had become in their presence. A far cry from the man - the father - _he_ had known at their age.

For not the first time, it became apparent that it was this very klatch of children (now grown) who had affected the war years change in his father. Or, his father had once dissented, had only coaxed into being the alteration he had first known upon news of Robin's death.

After this Pippa and Perry had said their goodbyes, Robin confronted his father. "It was not me they were expecting, you know, when Wadlowe told them he would take them to the viscount."

His father dismissed his conclusion. "Don't be ridiculous."

"No, I saw it in the surprise in their eyes upon being shown in. They were expecting to find my brother."

"Pish posh. Everyone must know by now you've returned."

It did not matter, of course, who the former war year child tenants of Kirk Leaves expected to find in charge of the Manor when they returned to offer their respects to the dying earl. But his father's actions toward Mark _did _matter. "You should not have sent him away," Robin announced.

"You, Sir," something of the Earl's usual command returned to him. "Are in no position to instruct a grown man with some years on him how to deal with his ward. Mark does not need to be here to see this. Were he here, he would be missing his exams."

"What you mean is, he has lost too many close to him in his life that you wish — inasmuch as you are able — to spare him this."

_Haruumph_. "Yes, something like that," the Earl begrudgingly agreed. "He is to return at week's end. I shall see him then."

Robin's mouth grew serious in its expression. "Though we both know, you and I, that your spirit will no longer be here to welcome him."

It was a cold truth, but one they had both acknowledged before removing themselves to the cottage.

"Mark and I have said what must, in such times be said," his father assured him. "I ask only that you continue in treating him as every bit the brother you have since I introduced you, recalling that he was to have had everything in your stead. Recalling that though his parents and his uncle have left him inheriting a comfortable pension, he shall always have to work, and shall always be in need of a home." A smile crept into the Earl's eyes, something of a muted twinkle not unlike that of his biological son's. "And other things bank accounts do not provide."

To this request, Robin nodded his agreement.

"I would have you married," the Earl added, trying his hand at seeing other requests granted, thinking he had found his son in a rare compliant mood.

"I _am_ married, Father," Robin answered, though the Earl was completely familiar with the story of Marion and the Channels.

"And it is as final as that?" the Earl pressed on, but tentatively, lightly.

"It is." Such a factual, settled response.

"There is no moving on?"

"There was none for you."

The Earl exhaled, gave himself a moment to gather his thoughts, moments which needs be had become longer, his exhales less natural, less without-thought than they had been just days ago. "For so long," he told his son, confessed to his son, "I allowed myself, my life, to be defined by what I had lost, rather than by what I had found. I would have you at finding, rather than — like me — falling into that loss."

Had he allowed himself a moment to reflect, rather than simply to knee-jerk reply, he would not have spoken, but the child — the motherless boy — yet inside him spoke up, answered what his father had meant both as an apology, and as a directive. "I could never pull you out of it," Robin answered, something of the failure and disappointment of childhood, of early adulthood lurking in his statement

"And yet you did," the Earl assured him, "finally, when it came to matter most."

Robin sat up, leaning closer to the bed. "What would you, then, have me to find, as I have told you another wife is not for me?"

There was no need to pause, here. "I do not know so very exactly. A purpose, a hobby. A passion. Have you, at MI-6, been at the doing of all good deeds? Could that be passion enough?" The Earl's eyes looked hopefully into his son's.

Robin considered the question. "I thought so once. But it feels less and less the doing of all good deeds since the end of the war — muddied — the playing field. The only thing I ever had true passion for was Marion. Marion and the others — the lads."

The Earl's hand slapped at the coverlet as he hit on an idea. "Go and visit your lads, then. See what they are at. What purposes they have found, what passions."

"What...hobbies?" A crooked smile bloomed on Robin's face, imagining John painting models, finding difficulty manipulating the brush with his large hands, Wills regarding a wall displaying a surfeit of collectible thimbles.

The Earl joined (though unable to do so very heartily) in his son's chuckle. "For lack of a better word."

They fell silent in the wake of their laughter, but Robin brought them out of it by declaring, "I have been thinking of visiting America."

"You have not said."

His reply was a considered one. "I find I should like to see the things she saw. To learn something of that place. Perhaps," he moved his head from side to side, "even, look up Saracen's Beau."

"The horse?" his father asked. "After all this, that horse?"

Robin shrugged. "He _was_ her best friend. She would have wanted to see him well cared for."

The Earl sighed. "Well, if that is not hobby enough for any one man —" Some new, or more intense pain caused him to cut his words short.

Robin realized he should have known — that it would be the final end that would return his father to something of talkativeness.

"Shall I pack you a pipe?" he offered, uncertain of any other succor he had to offer.

"Yes," his father agreed. "I rather think...I rather think that would be just the thing, Robin." He seldom — if ever — had used his son's informal nickname.

Like the pipe sketched by Magritte, this implement, this action proved more than the simple smoking of a pipe. It proved instead a farewell, a celebration, a reward earned. And with his son, a moment of silent, of enduring accord.

And when he had finished what he could of it, given as much of his breath as he could to it, there in that cottage so small, yet brim-filled with genuine, hard-won affection, it was as though Robert Oxley the elder, Earl of Huntingdon, had but dependably placed the final period at the end of the work that was now to stand as his life.

And even his son could not rebel against that.

* * *

><p><strong>CHANNEL ISLANDS – GUERNSEY – 8 May 1945 – BARNSDALE ESTATE – eve of liberation –<strong> He felt the minutes spilling out of what time he had managed to amass for the doing of this particular task.

Piles of tyres, cut from what was left of the autos in the car shed, were burning with all the unmistakable pungency of rubber upon the front lawn near the circle drive by which one approached the house.

Allen Dale, well-known as the Alderney Kommandant's driver, uncharacteristically made his way toward the great house without the use of a car. For the better part of a fortnight it had been the worst-kept secret on the Channel Islands: liberation was at-hand, rescue was imminent.

Something about this knowledge (and lack of an automobile's speed) had made his trip from St. Peter Port rather more reflective and scenic than he usually found it to be. Never had the thousands of empty houses on Guernsey — abandoned since their owners' evacuations five years ago or in the wake of '42's reprisal deportations - seemed more desolate, their un-cared for lawns and gardens seemed more overgrown and unkempt. Woodlands that even since his arrival here mid-war had been hazardously thinned - or worse. On an island with not much woodland to spare. Even so, the newly-cut, uncured wood from such scavengings scarcely burned.

The islands were adrift. The Kommandant's Alderney command had threatened repeatedly to fall into abject chaos, if not mutiny. Once St. Malo had fallen to the Allies, and Allied tanks were beyond the Somme electric on the islands became a thing of the past, a memory of better times. What was left of petrol – 'motor spirits' the Jerries called it - (mere drops, they were told) became more highly valued than diamonds. Even the third-hand bike he at present piloted had cost him the equivalent of more than one-hundred pounds, even with its barely-navigable hard hosepipe tyres, and the fact that it was, in point of fact, a girl's.

Islanders had for so long resorted to steeping dried bramble leaves for tea, accepted ground-to-powder potatoes as a version of flour — and since July of last year had subsisted (mostly) on boiled cabbage for meals. Small wonder they had any energy left to them to celebrate or make ready for their coming saviors. Yet the joint flag of Guernsey and Jersey dotted the horizon at more than one home he could see.

He wondered whether the past weeks were not, indeed, the exact opposite of the ten or so days just before thirtieth June of '40, the rumor and anxiety he had heard of in Islanders' stories of the time immediately preceding the landing of four Jerry planes at the Guernsey airport. A feat that had made it impossible to discount Herr Hitler's boast and timetable that he would arrive similarly fifteenth August in London, herself.

_Almost made sense, the Heindls keeping their little 'uns behind_. _If Britain was bound for a similar fate only some weeks hence, what use to send ones children on to face that likely eventuality alone?_

Christmastime of '44 had initiated the only moments of light, of hope, that long, grim winter, with the first of five arrivals of Red Cross ship _Vega_ and a box for each Islander of foodstuffs and supplies, courtesy of Canada and New Zealand.

Well, here it was, then; the end, at last. When '_Pennsylvania six, five-thousand_' might be retired back into being, simply, the celebrated telephone number of Cafe Rouge at New York City's Hotel Pennsylvania. Simply, a song by Glenn Miller and his Orchestra, _sans_ subtext.

_For the islands, a return to life. _

And the Jerries knew it, too. Heard the same rumors as the Islanders. Knew they were done for.

Arriving at the steps to the front door of the house, he let his bike drop haphazardly onto its side and dashed in, already in a sweat to have done and be on to the next need, determined to locate and sort _Fraulein_ Eleri with all speed.

Trying not to notice the word for 'Jew-lover' now painted (and even slightly misspelled) in a Deutsch scrawl upon the grand old doorway's wooden lintel, Allen shouted for her in the front entryway, and again at the base of the stairway. Receiving no reply, he made for the former nursery rooms on the upper floor she had claimed for her own.

She was not to be found there, despite his continued shouting and dashing about, but he assembled a small traveling bag of her things — two changes of clothing, a light coat, the three or so items she had about that appeared to hold personal significance, and brought this with him on his continued search as he frantically descended the main stair.

He reached the passageway to the ladies' bedrooms, noting a canvas sliced here, broken out of a frame, there. He knew, at least, not to seek her in Marion's former rooms — there was naught left _there_ but floor joists for walking upon, bare wall studs where plaster ought to be. He knew not what had become of its furnishings, this space the first victim of the German's arbitrary scorched earth retreat, never rehabbed, never restored to order following Gisbonnhoffer's goon squad dismantling it a year ago.

As he flew by one of the still-grand sitting rooms on the ground floor he noted that the large, concert-sized harp that surely someone in the Nighten family must have known how to play held to its usual spot adjacent to the grand piano, but that its strings had been cut. Only one remained, the others tightly coiled like snakes exhausted from striking upon the floor round about the instrument's gilded frame.

His heart beat like he was being shot at, his breath huffed with exertion. Still, he did not find her. And still, he lost more time.

He continued to race about the house (bag now in one hand) calling for Eleri by name. He encountered no one, Jerry or Islander, the edifice quiet as a crypt. Counting off everywhere he'd been, he thought to check on the natatorium through the exotic flower hothouse. He did not think it was likely he would find her there, as he knew it had been drained (along with all the fountains in the estate's park being turned off) over half-a-year ago.

As expected, she was not there. Instead, he was met with broken concrete along the pool's far side, showing that it had been turned into something of an improvised shooting range. The greater part of the glass windows that enclosed the space entire had also been felled by enemy fire. And even his statue, his favorite nude, had become a casualty, knocked from her eternally tenuous perch into the empty _piscine_, where she had broken and lost a chunk of her face, leaving her with a decidedly confused visage.

His voice echoed here, but incompletely, the spaces where glass windows had broken out keeping the effect from completing, allowing in too many noises from the park beyond.

He found Eleri, finally, in the last place he would have thought to look, a place of work and toil: the kitchens.

She was wearing a pair of the ubiquitous clogs every Islander had resorted to when the soles of their shoes had worn out. Her frock was rumpled, clearly having not seen a pressing iron. Her long dark hair hung unstyled, thrown out of the way over her shoulders, but cheekily refusing to stay put there.

Still not quite catching his breath from his mad rush about the property, he rendered his question somewhat more rudely than he meant it. "What have you gone and taken yourself off to here for?"

She overlooked his tone (or quite possibly hadn't noticed it). "I am trying," she told him, with a degree of concentration, "to approximate a sandwich." She was indeed attempting to wrestle distinctly mouldy cheese (in better times it would have been thrown out) onto crumbling-in-her-hands crackers — the sort one might find in a Jerry soldier's ration pack.

"How long since the staff have gone?" he questioned her when she did not look up from her intent study of the foodstuffs. "Since you have been alone?"

"Three days?" she guessed, looking as though she were more speaking to the countertop than him. "Perhaps four. I have lost track of time with the soldiers gone."

"The British Navy will land by noon tomorrow," he told her, expecting her to react.

"I am pleased to hear it," she told him blandly, continuing to appraise her disaster of an improvised lunch. "Perhaps they will bring provisions."

He gave her a moment to continue. When she did not speak further, nor evidence any compulsion to be on the move, he spoke again, some of his earlier frantic energy returning, along with a helping of exasperation. "You do not understand. You must be gone from this place."

She turned her head toward him. Seemed to contemplate the goatee setting on his chin. Her upper cheek pinched her right eye half-shut. "Why?"

He found himself taking a parentally forbidding stance; feet apart, hand threatening to settle disapprovingly on hip. "For the very reason that your father's position has thus far protected you — and which will now render you a target."

It was clear she did not understand, nor grasp the gravity of the matter. "A target? Of the British Navy?"

"_No!_ Of the Islanders. Island Constable Rowan," Allen was reluctant to bring up the name, but knew of no other way to expediently drive his point home, "will stand now in the majority. You must get away, hide yourself until tempers settle, allow for a time — however short — for forgetting."

This she seemed to take quite well. "Where shall we go, then?"

"We?" _Ah, he had mis-read her easy acceptance of his announcement that she must go into hiding_. "There'll be no we." He shook his head. "I am expected back on Alderney immediately." He did not mention this expectation was one of his true commanding officer Oxley's, and not of her father's. He could not tell her that his true task was one of keeping her father firmly in his sights until the arriving liberators might take him into special custody.

A familiar, stubborn crease popped up at the head of her eyebrows. "But if I am to be a target because of my father — whom I've never served, or supported - then how much more a target will _you_ be? Driving and helping him? Taking his money?" she asked, archly, before turning sincere. "You had best come too, and take your own advice."

"Ellie," he removed her hands from their food-based task, turning them over in his, noting that beyond the callus ladylike needlework taught by the sister of Ripley Convent had birthed, she had never done a full day's work in her life - finally settling his thumb onto her left pulse point, lightly rubbing at it there. "I have to do what _I_ have to do," he told her. "And you have to do this: here is a bag I have packed for you, you can take no more. Three novels," he showed her the spines of _Gone with the Wind_, _A Passage to India_, and _Middlemarch_. "They are Sir Edward's, and therefore in English." Here he pulled out the French/English dictionary and grammar he had also found in the upstairs sunroom. "By the time you have read all three — not a day earlier - you may venture out – cautiously - in search of news."

"Venture from where?" she asked him suspiciously, "If I am to straightaway leave here?"

"Thornton's cottage," he told her, selling confidence in his delivery of it, knowing it was an imperfect hiding place, but that he could locate no other on such short notice and limited reconnaissance. "It is at the end of a forgotten track, and no one has lived there for over a year."

"These will take some time to read," she responded, and he knew it pained her to admit that her English reading skills were far from fluent. "What shall I do for food? Go fishing? Learn to set snares on an island picked clean of game? Ransack a neighbor's beehives for honey?"

He appreciated her concern. "I would send you to Eva and her family if I thought it would do any good, but she will likely find herself in just the same situation," he explained.

"Eva? My father's— You would billet me with his Jerrybag?"

At this he let her hands go, allowing them with some force to smack into her thighs.

"Don't _do_ that," he wagged his head at her. "Don't let me hear you say that, _Fraulein_. You'll not find a more generous and forgiving girl if you looked for ten years." It was his turn to feel a disapproving frown crease his own brow. "I won't have it. I won't have you speak like that about things you are too young to understand."

Eleri inhaled, getting a good breath to begin her rebuke of him (especially in regard to her age), when he distracted her by producing a tin and presenting it to her, though his face retained its grim cast from her condemnation of the Heindl girl.

Recognizing the tin as food, all others matters fell from her mind and she snatched it from him, turned the key back to open its top, and put her nose down to inhale the pungently familiar odor of sardines.

Even before the staff's flight from Barnsdale, food (for German and Islander alike) had become scarce to teetering on the brink of imaginary. Cook had been trying to keep them all going on a diet of thin, unsalted soups made of everything from wildflowers to (what appeared to be) boiled moss. Even tea improvised out of blackberry bush leaves had begun to seem an extravagance. After such strictures, the smell of the sardines would have caused a less-focused person to pass out.

_Eleri_ had a fish in each hand before she realized it. "How did you get such a lovely, lovely thing?" she asked, unable to withhold a smile at the gift, her earlier irritation instantly submerged, chased away into insignificant memory.

"Out on the bike I've strapped two packages for you," Allen explained. "You'll have salt and pepper, another tin of sardines, bit of sugar, SPAM, cheese...and chocolate." He had no intention of telling her how he had come by it.

At the mention of the chocolate she stopped. Her mouth, where she had inserted a sardine, stopped chewing. "You have _Vega_ boxes," she referenced the Red Cross relief ship that had first arrived at Christmastime with relief provisions. Her manner became very grave. "They are not meant for me. It was only for Islanders they were sent." She thrust the remaining sardine toward him with great solemnity. "I do not want them."

He did not indulge himself by commenting on the very opposite desire from the one she voiced clearly visible in the rapaciousness of her hungry, undernourished face. That look of desperation that hunger and want could bring about in one - even one such as Eleri, unused to any physiological need going unmet.

"Do not worry," he assured her, "They are mine to do with as I please." He did not confide in her that they were, in fact, the contents of Oxley's last two boxes of five, nor the fact that until a fortnight ago none of the unit had realized he had never touched them. That he had been — only then — discovered to have given up eating. Not that it had been a hard thing for him to do, food - even on La Salle's farm - no longer easy to find, and certainly not in any quantity. The islands had long ago reached their breaking point, trying to feed the thousands of Jerries the Reich had shipped in in addition to their own people, in an economy that had always depended upon regular supplies and necessities coming via shipping from France. Shipping which, before June of last year, and the Allied landing in Normandy, had been halted completely.

No, Robin had not — as they had hoped — managed to marshal himself in preparation of liberation. Rather, the closer the British Navy came to re-taking the islands, the fainter seemed his desire to be there to greet them when they arrived. He grew ever-more inward. Desire for food, comfort, normalcy, these desires that had the rest of the unit — the world that was the islands — in its grip took no hold upon him whatsoever. He worked no less hard than before, yet, unlike before when such toil seemed to feed him, it now, in the end, drained him utterly.

Allen recalled when he had first noticed Ox had given up on fags. He had not said anything about it at the time, never referenced it, but slowly came to notice, to understand, that Robin had done so to alleviate the unit's overall demand. To keep the others from experiencing a shortfall of tobacco. But this neglecting of the _Vega_ relief foodstuffs — this had not been a sacrifice. Robin had not bothered, even, to pass his allotment on to another. Instead, the boxes had been found by Wills, forgotten, occupying a dusty corner at La Salle's as though they held nothing of particular significance or worth.

He came back to himself, noticing Eleri's eyes on him, having caught him out in his contemplation.

"Looking here," he gestured to the first of two boxes, and offered a warning, "you might think these fifteen ounces of marmalade seem a king's feast. But you must think to the future. You must ration it all carefully. You will have no more until you finish your reading," he gave the books a thump, "and leave Thornton's." He let one eyebrow flick up. "And perhaps not then."

At this he saw the edges of concern creep into her thoughts. "You will not visit me again?"

"I will do what I can for you, _Fraulein_ Vaiser," he promised, without being able to explain to her why any such additional help or contact would be in doubt. "I give my word. But you must understand; I do not know what shape any such assistance might, at present, take."

"You are not coming?" she asked, not understanding, a child about to be left on a train platform to complete the journey alone. "Not even as far as this cottage?"

"No," he refused to allow himself to be moved by her on-coming trepidation. "I am for the cellar, and then quick as you can say 'knife', back to my post."

She ignored his attempts to rush her off in all haste, and mulishly followed him down the stair to what had once been Sir Edward's wine cellar, once among the bailiwick's finest.

It had been months — perhaps half-a-year - since he had snooped about in it, and without electric even at midday it was no easy task, but they found a stub of candle, and made use of the last of his black market matches, and he purposed not to mind the wax's dripping and scalding the skin of his hand. But a moment on the stair as they descended and they were surrounded by the rising smell of moist earth and darkness.

He stepped on glass before they had occasion to sight it. Broken, everywhere. There was quite a lot, littered in among old corks - shattered from broken bottles where impatient soldiers without Clun's necessary corkscrew had taken to smashing off the necks of wine bottles, not minding the small shards of glass that might linger in their cups, so great was their thirst, so immediate their craving.

Holding the candle as high as he might — three steps from the bottom of the stair - they both could see row upon row upon row of empty wine racks, ransacked and beggared by Gisbonnhoffer and his Jerries, as far into the distance as the candle stub might throw its dim light.

"Will it last that long? To take you into the depths?" Eleri asked of the candle, knowing the cellar to be larger than what was presently on display for their limited vision, and assuming Allen meant to nick a few bottles for himself.

"Don't need it to," he assured her, handing over the fast-disappearing stub.

Using his finger he counted the stones of the cellar's foundation, beginning at where it met with the floor above. He counted several down, and a few over, then used his fingernail to score the area around two stones, an area roughly ten inches across by five high. It took him a moment to work the surprisingly loose stones out, revealing a rough dug-out hiding place showing the corks of two bottles laid upon their side. One hand for each to the task, he withdrew them. "Laid them by," he confessed to her, "a little something on account, accruing interest until liberation day."

Eleri only narrowed her, as usual, keen gaze.

* * *

><p>As they turned and made their way back up the stair, she followed him, snuffing the candle stub as soon as could be done, to save what there was yet left of it, and pocketed it in case she had need of it over the next days.<p>

Mr. Allen returned to the initial breathless rush of his visit, and she was hard pressed to keep pace with him on his trot out to the front entry, and his bicycle beyond it. Throwing the bag of clothing and books he had packed for her over her shoulder, he unstrapped the two as-promised _Vega_ boxes from the bike's rear-wheel shelf, and handed them to her, each tied shut with twine. She was only just able to hold (and she hoped, carry) each in a hand. Under their bulk she felt something of a stevedore. Something of the tales she had heard of fleeing refugees. She was weighed down on all sides, only vaguely certain she could locate the cottage in question with the help of his directions.

She tried not to notice (tried not to scheme to exploit) the uncertainty at play in his eyes when he cast off from the lowest step on the wobbly junk-piece of a bicycle and quick-turned his face away from her, and to the drive ahead, and his way back to St. Peter Port.

Thinking of the two bottles he had cleverly laid by — stolen, yet without removing them from the house — pinched with an eye ahead to liberation, Eleri let out a sigh, and asked aloud (now to no one) in puzzled exhaustion, using for the first time what she had been told was his first name, "Liberation. And what could you, Dale Allen, possibly have to celebrate about that?"

With him soon to be out of her line of vision, she turned, trundling her loads toward what was left of the small woods in hopes of locating the over-grown path he promised her would eventually make itself known. Certainly _she_ could think of nothing to feel at present particularly happy about. And yet, she realized she had forgotten. There would be marmalade tonight.

She took a mis-step and the books in the over-shoulder bag smacked hard against her hip.

Marmalade. And not a soul to share it with.

* * *

><p>Every joint of the third-hand bicycle rattled with the threat of coming apart as he rode it down the Barnsdale drive, away from the great house, away from his time spent within it, and away from the Kommandant's daughter. <em>Over. Done. On to the next.<em>

He was not meant for this. The unit had not trained for long-term operations. They were meant for seven-day deployments on the Continent, ten days at most. The only true constants in their war meant to be each other. Each other, and always imminent returns to mother England. _Piccadilly, Bow Bells. St. Paul's_. Vauxhall Cross. Hardship and the forming of attachments to be transient, as were they — transient, this unit who but-fleetingly endured them.

He had not told the more French-than-German _fraulein_ that her father had ordered him to return to Alderney with her — that Vaiser's choice was that he and his reviled offspring would face the consequences of the coming surrender and handing over of the islands together.

No, he had not told her that any hopes she had of his being able to visit her in her coming hideaway at Thornton's were among the slimmest of slim. Not told her that they would never see one another again. Not even told her 'good-bye'. The continued secrecy of the unit was all, the possibility of their being (following a debriefing) shipped to the Pacific theatre a near-absolute. The Channel Islands' war was finished, complete. Allen Dale's had only just reached the interval.

Passing through the estate's gateway, he knew that he was too far past the burning tyres to think them responsible for the constricting of his chest, but he felt it — oh, how he felt it, nevertheless.

But breath in his body or not, he must carry on.

**...TBC...**

* * *

><p><strong>AN: **I am trying, for the first time, to post this from a '.docx', rather than code it into HTML myself as I usually do. We shall see how it goes.

If there are glitches I will upload it again later when I have coded it.


	5. Knock knock Who's there

"_I have often heard it said in America that when one door closes, another one opens. It is a statement of eternal optimism (a mindset of which I have found little shortage in this country). I have yet, however, to hear a similar turn of phrase for doors opening and closing in reference to whom might be found standing on the other side. Certainly, the Unforeseen arriving upon your doorstep is easily as fate-altering an occurrence as the opening or shutting of a portal; as the snap decisions one makes about whether to ask an individual in, ignore their knocks, or step through the door and join with them on the outside. Even, whether one is first inclined to peep through hole or window glass to establish the Unexpected's identity._

* * *

><p><em>I had been at writing on Tasha that morning. Trying, for Zara's sake, to recall her mother's laughter, to pin down the nature of her mother's gentle humor. The sweetness she possessed that uncovered a goodness in everything - even, I was beginning to understand, in me. <em>

_My writing had left me swimming a bit still in the ether (or whatever poets might choose to name it) where the dead continue to exist for the living. My reaction to the unexpected sound of the door buzzer was initially one of a slight start, a quick rattle of the head to clear it of that ether, and a deliberate, if disinterested, walk down the hallway to the front door, which no true neighbor of ours ever used - preferring the less formal approach of the door off our kitchen. _- **Thomas Carter, notebook #17, year 1954**

**Hoboken, NEW JERSEY - 832 King's Court - Spring 1954 -** The man known as Thomas Carter opened the front door with the large window in response to the rung buzzer. He made no attempt to part the homey, white lace curtain hanging from the door's interior and shielding the inside of the house from view to discern the identity of who had rung said buzzer.

He opened the door all the way, no cracking it as one might in certain parts of the city, in certain apartment buildings. There was little enough fear of crime in this area, and at least four neighbors seated on their own porches in full view of the Carter family's front door. Behind him ran a long hallway, a set of second-floor stairs to his right. Mid-hallway a short table was visible, holding the telephone.

Upon sight of the buzzer-ringer's face, Carter's pupils (but not his lids) widened with the tautness of alert, until a trained glance to each side of the man - his head did not move in the doing of it, encompassing what was presently to either end of the street, convinced him that the man once known as the Alderney Kommandant's driver had shown up at King's Court unaccompanied.

Carter returned his own stare (that, now, of a fifty-year-old) to his visitor's for the most part unaltered-by-the-passage-of-a-decade face.

What seemed like three full minutes passed with neither man speaking.

Carter took further stock of his visitor. "Are you coming in, then?" he finally asked, his tone dependably impossible to read.

At Allen's 'yeah', his host stood to one side instructing, "straight on through to the back, kitchen on your left."

As Dale stepped across the threshold, the wooden door, its curtain swinging in the breeze created by the action, slid quietly shut behind him.

Unsurprised that Carter expected him to walk on ahead without being led (unknown quantities best kept to one's frontside rather than one's back, as any good soldier knows), Allen's quick mind for observation made note of the large, mirrored hat rack with bench to the left of the door, the several ladies' hats its brass hooks bore, umbrellas with slender, feminine handles, a shawl.

As he strode passed the broad arch, which opened into the front sitting room, he noticed the curtains matched the patterns both within the area rugs _and_ upon the furniture upholstery. The kitchen, once reached, was as charming as they came: geraniums potted neatly in the over-sink window, pretty dishes on display within a hutch meant for just such things.

At the table, one of its dropped leaves lopsidedly pulled up, sat a dainty china teacup (the fence still within him guessed it for Royal Doulton) nearby an open copybook and capped fountain pen. At the notice of the teacup, his eye shot back to the hutch, now taking in the set of porcelain jugs upon its counter surface, the upper shelf of whimsical tobys. Clearly, someone's collection of special pretties.

"I'm eating," Carter said from behind him when they reached the table. "Want anything?"

Not sure whether to regret having taken a late breakfast at a diner nearer the heart of Hoboken, Allen shook his head. "Nah," he said, though he could not deny a level of curiosity about Carter's possible skill at cooking. "That your sallyport, there?" he asked, his own soldier's-mind lighting up at the sight of the kitchen's back-stoop door, perfect for a quick getaway.

Carter cocked an eyebrow at the question, then nodded good-naturedly, a flicker of smile registering at his mouth.

He did not suggest Allen take a chair at the table, but set himself to assembling a small plate of cucumber slices alongside a sort of buckwheat-concoction he took from a pot on the stovetop. Over the cucumber he poured a clear oil and something that from the smell of it Allen took to be dill weed.

Realizing he was, in fact, thirsty, he cast his eyes about for Carter's kettle (there was, after all, a cup at the table), but did not see it. Instead, his eyes came to rest upon a large and ornately decorated urn with a spigot on the front. "What's that, there?" he asked his taciturn host.

Carter's eyes followed Allen's to that spot on the counter-top. "A _samovar_," he answered the other man. For tea."

"Oh, blimey," Allen said before he could stop himself.

_Tea_.

Hearing the longing in his guest's voice, Carter reached into a cabinet and produced a second teacup, loading it with far more sugar than Allen would have ever wished in a single cup of tea, and brought it under the samovar's spigot to fill it.

"Slowly," he recommended to Allen. "It will not be quite the Earl Grey you are used to."

Allen took the cup with eager fingers, dragging a chair out from the table to seat himself, as he saw Carter returning to what he had to assume was his pre-door answering position at the copybook.

Allen picked up the teaspoon from the saucer under his cup and attempted to stir what had not dissolved of the sugar into the tea. There was no mention of - or offering of - cream. The spoon encountered more than the usual amount of resistance as he tried to make it stir.

He gave up, and brought the cup to his lips anyway. It was exotic, yes. Spice he did not recognize, and sweet as candy. But it was tea.

He watched a moment as Carter, now seeming entirely unfazed by his presence, set to eating. They sat like this for the better part of Carter's meal. Certainly all the way through the cucumbers, and mostly through the buckwheat. Then a clock elsewhere in the house began to chime the hour. Suddenly, Allen felt as though he had sat upon a tack without noticing it until that moment, and the spell the house and its domestic environment (so unlike an apartment, so unlike everything he had surrounded himself with of late) was broken.

"How's the wife, then?" he began, attempting conversation.

"Wife?" Carter squinted at him, as an academic might at the subject of an experiment that had surprised them.

"The little woman? Hats in the hall, curtains at the window - doily under every picture frame or whatnot." He gestured with his dainty teacup. "All-matching china. Touches of domesticity everywhere about."

"Ah," Carter bobbed his chin in understanding. "No wife. Mother, grandmother."

Allen narrowed one eye at his host. Mumma's boy, Carter was _not_. He stopped himself short of revealing how much the homeiness of this place sang out to him, seeming to offer something of a well-earned rest, a haven for the weary. How much it inspired a jealousy in him for something he had never known: not as a child growing up, not now in his apartment in the City. Not even at La Salle's during the war, when _he_ had been tasked with accepting the impersonal billet offered at the Dixcart.

"Cozy, though, innit?" he asked instead, as usual speaking as a means of misdirection - vocal concealment of what commentary was truly taking place in his head.

Carter simply cocked an eyebrow in reply. Not surprising. The cove never was one much for small talk.

"Up on all the news, then, are you?" Allen asked.  
>The eyebrow remained elevated, now in question. "About you lot?" he finally asked after an extended silence. "You're the first I've set eyes on since that night in '44."<p>

Allen's mind balked for a moment at this. "Nothing? Not a word? Noooo," he at last dissented. "I have it from the man

himself that Johnson sent a card the last two Christmases running."

Carter sat back and considered this for a moment. "Yesss," he stretched the word out. "I suppose that is true. A card at Christmas." He did not ask if Johnson was how Allen had come about finding his home address. Certainly he had no idea how John had come to get hold of it. The arrival of the first card with its Sarkese stamps almost causing, for a moment, his throat to close in surprise, confusion...dread, it had been so long since he had thought about the place. But it held nothing sinister inside, merely a greeting card, three sentences expressing good wishes and the hopes that he was well, and Iain Johnson's signature. By the next Christmas the chief interest in its arrival among the residents of 832 was the hope that the stamps upon it might be saved from the envelope for Zara's new collection and passion for philately.

The card within contained similar sentiments to its year-old twin, and carried nothing of news or question within its fold.

* * *

><p>Allen found that without Carter offering any sort of assistance in the making of conversation - asking nothing, merely listening and occasionally responding...<em>waiting<em> for what Allen would say - that he was running on, saying things and speaking without periods in a way he had no intention of doing. "Mitch - he was found alive, you may like to know - and John have both married," he began, though Carter had not asked for word on any of the unit, nor evinced any interest in their whereabouts. "I," and he had no idea why he was about to tell, "_I_ am recently divorced."

Carter took a sip of his tea. Rearranged stray cucumber seeds left on his plate with his fork. Despite these actions displaying but a half-interest in Allen's words, his eyes only fleetingly left the other man's face. Never settled elsewhere.

"Ox is..." Allen began, and then took a verbal step back. "Our Djak, you know," he began again, satisfied to note a sudden increase in stillness falling upon the usual keen alertness of the other man. "She is well."

If possible, Carter's stillness increased exponentially.

"'Been spending the last years here and there, everywhere about trying to find some of her family, her particular clan." For the first time since knocking on the door of this house, Allen felt himself gain control of the situation. "She travels with Reddy," he added, coating the statement with all the significance that a single woman and a similarly single man traveling together might imply. He tried not to let the perpetual chill of Carter's eyes throw him off his game. "So you see, we lot did manage to save at least _one_ woman from Jerry." He had meant it to come out as a rousing endorsement of Unit 1192, their time on the Islands. "At least one," he added, his voice devoid of any enthusiasm.

"Only Dja -?" Carter began to ask, and feeling his control of the situation immediately evaporate, Allen cut him off.

"Gisbonnhoffer had her killed, later that same night you escaped." He said it normally, informatively. It was neither an indictment nor a confession. After all, he believed the bulk of blame in Marion's loss rested entirely with him.

The silence following his statement was punctured by a decided 'tink' coming from the dainty cup encircled by Carter's hand.

Looking to see what had happened, Allen saw that the pressure of the former RAF man's grip had snapped the bone china handle clean off it.

"Meeting me was the unluckiest day of her life," Carter said. His tone was utterly matter-of-fact. His thumb found a jagged spot on the broken cup handle to rub like a worry stone, flirting with the possibility of it cutting his skin.

"I need the loo," Allen asked abruptly, and as Carter's eyes refocused, he jerked his head in its direction.

Allen pushed back his chair and found his way to the loo door easily enough. It was a clean spot, stylishly tiled floor and walls, light green porcelain tub, matching sink with two taps, medicine chest with a long tube lightbulb to either side, which hummed for a moment before engaging when he flipped their switch to turn them on.

He looked back to double-check that the lock below the doorknob was turned, though he could hardly imagine a scenario when Carter would choose to follow him into a lavatory.

Allen engaged the cool tap and bathed his face for what was a ridiculously long time. When he did turn the running water off, he rested on his two hands, gripping the sides of the hand basin, slick and wet, and cool enough to promise calm. After a moment he reached for the towel to dry and grabbed for the extendable shaving mirror that was screwed into the wall at chin-level.

The long, crisscross accordion handle expanded to reach him, and he tilted the mirror until it was parallel to the floor, reaching into his shirt pocket to withdraw a small wax paper packet, no larger than a business card. Its white, powdery contents were easily visible through the opaque paper.

For a moment he closed his eyes, saw again the scene of the party with Florinda's show business friends (always parties with Florinda's friends), recalled himself stumbling into one of the bedrooms looking for his coat on his way to leave. He had felt wretched. He was bored with drinking, disinterested in the mindless issues that seemed to consume her collection of nearly-famous performers, and desperately wishing he knew of a place to go to have a good time, an evening like the old days. He would have given two years' wages for forty-five minutes in La Salle's kitchen. Even, just the lads assembled in the dark, monotonous mines. No food, no drink, no entertainment. But all together.

Twenty minutes after accepting a similar packet from one of the blokes handing them out in that back bedroom, he had felt amazing, ten feet tall and bulletproof. The things he did not want to think about were gone, the party was the best he had ever attended, the other guests the most glittering collection of intelligentsia he had ever encountered.

He needed some of that energy, that force of fearlessness now.

He looked to make certain the mirror was level before he would shake the cocaine out onto it, for an instant catching his own eye in his reflection.

It was a queer flash, seeing into this disembodied eye. It allowed him the luxury of sizing himself up as he might do another person he would meet.

What he read in the expression, the look of that blue eye in his brief encounter with it was the bleakness of defeat, a bottomless depth of self-disappointment. And the coming-on panic of desperation.

He sucked in his breath, rattled by the insight. Found that the first two observations he could deal with. They were true, those emotions. There was nothing to be ashamed of in them, no matter how hard they were to live with.

It was the desperation he chose to turn his back on. Any good confidence man knows that it is getting a mark to either buy into pride or desperation that wins the day, that makes them manipulable, that brings them - however briefly - under your control in the grift. This, he could not have, could not stomach.

Despair was one thing. Losing control of your life, your actions, that was tantamount to losing who you were. To, rather than being a player, being _played_.

The force of his own, assertive personality recoiled at the notion, and with shaky hands, he tossed the unemptied packet into the lavatory bin, hearing as it hit upon the metal bottom.

Exiting the room, Allen Dale made his way back toward the kitchen, where he bid Carter an abrupt farewell and said not to get up, he could find his own way back to the door.

* * *

><p>"Carter?" fifteen-year-old Zara had asked when she came home that afternoon from school, calling him (as often as not) by the manufactured surname they both shared. "Babushka asks; who was here today?"<p>

He should have known that his ninety-plus year-old grandmother - no matter how bodily infirm she might become, unable to descend the stairs more than once a day - would have wondered at the unfamiliar sounds of another man invited by her grandson into the house.

He shrugged. "Just some Tommy I used to know. ...During the war."

"Did _he_ break the cup handle, then?" his daughter persisted, too clever by half for many a neighborhood boy's liking. "I saw it by the sink, waiting for mending."

"Mmm," Carter replied, noncommittally. "I suppose he did."

She waited, to see if he would tell her more. When he didn't, she asked on. "_Why_ did he come? Did he want something?"

"I don't know," Carter confessed. "He left without saying."

"You don't suppose -" Zara began, and then broke off. "You don't suppose he's the same man Molly's father says spent the night in his car just down the street from us? Mr. Spence nearly called the police on that man."

"_How_ far down the street, Zara?"

Zara answered, and he let the conversation die away, trying not to arouse her further interest in the matter, which he would have preferred to consider closed. Still, later that night following the evening meal he chose to go for a solitary turn around the block. He found himself stopping at the spot his daughter had named, and discovered what was easily a night's-worth of ashed cigarette butts dotting the asphalt, proof that whatever had brought Allen Dale to his New Jersey door, the former undercover soldier had not found his journey there to be an easy one.

* * *

><p><strong>LONDON - The Tripp Club - 1954 -<strong> It was not every day a lapsed member came calling.

Depleted in its membership consequent of the war, the return of _any_ former members was cause for great celebration, especially when the returning prodigal was none other than the universally well-liked (now) Lord Bonchurch, who had at war's-end found it more to his taste to remain abroad (so it was said) than to return for any length of time to London, and his former haunts.

The bellman at the door had little enough time to sound the alarm, begin marshalling the staff to inform them. The lift operator was too young, himself, to know whom the man with the cane (of necessity, not fashion) was that he transported to the second floor.

And Sir Mitch, far _too_ beside himself as he stutter marched past the reading room and into the saloon - a flurry of irritation and newsprint from the several papers he carried under his free arm - to be sidetracked by greetings and well wishes from the loyal staff.

"_Where_ is he?" he sniped pointedly to the barman, Rhu Salaam. Salaam, a turbaned Sikh who had never had cause (or the government's permission) to leave his post even during the war, knew immediately whom it was Sir Mitch sought, and inclined a knowing shoulder in the former Viscount, now Earl of Huntingdon's direction, where he was seated solitarily among the comfortable chairs beyond the immediate vicinity of the center bar.

Sir Mitch, if possible, threw even more purpose behind his thumping gait, behind every contact between his cane and the floor, until he was standing - papers and outer garments barely even settling from his madcap approach - dead center of Lord Oxley. "What _do_ you think you're on about?" he demanded, and would have stomped his bad leg in emphasis had the memory of its injury not recalled itself to him.

Robin looked up from where he had been benignly examining his fully-drained glass in the light, rolling it back and forth on the tips of his fingers.

"'Nice to see you, Robin,'" Oxley said quietly, as though portraying Mitch's correct half of the conversation. He was not drunk. "'Not been around much since the funeral. Missed you. How are things?'" He shifted slightly in his seat so that he might make eye contact with Lord Bonchurch, his oldest and dearest friend - and lone confidant, and replied as though to the speech he had just aped on behalf of his visitor. "Hullo, Mitch, Old Man. Good of you to stop by, check on me." He gave his lips a loose purse and lightly shrugged. "Give a care."

"Give. A. _Care_?" Mitch fumed, gearing up for further vituperation, and began pelting Robin with the various newspapers he had brought in under his shoulder.

Of necessity, Robin threw up his hands, crossed at the wrists, to protect his face from the onslaught.

"Good of me to stop by?" Mitch's voice jumped an octave. "To _check_ on you? _Seth_," and here Mitch's voice could have been no more forbidding in its tone, "is beside himself. Worried to death you've gone off the deep!" He wagged his head wildly at the heavens. "Lost to us all!"

As Mitch fussed, Robin had grabbed for and caught one of the papers, and turned (as though he knew instinctively to find that spot for which he was looking) to a certain page, running his finger down the public columns of advertisements, notices, and personal appeals.

"Don't do this to us again, Robin! _Don't_. Just, don't!" Seeing that he had lost Robin's further undivided attention, Mitch heaved a sigh and collapsed, as though spent, into the nearest chair.

Robin replied with nothing but easy self-possession. "So you're telling me you found _all_ of these," he threw a hand out to indicate the excess of newsprint surrounding him, "based entirely on Seth's seeing my advert in the _Times_?"

Mitch snorted. "_One_ is enough to frighten Seth. Having been through this before -"

"And willingly..."

"_AND willingly_," he accepted Robin's edit, "it is one thing to indulge a grieving man in the immediate wake of war and of loss. It is quite another thing - _ten years_ later - to discover same man has reverted. Only that now he is not simply asking for news of -" he still could not say the name, not to Robin, " - his wife's last hours in the _Times_, he is posting similar requests in the French papers, in London's Russian language weeklies. Even, _here_," he waved about one of the loose pages, "in Yiddish!"

Robin, undeterred, and not rising to Mitch's level of outrage, merely cocked his brow and admitted, "I did not think you would prove a great help on _that_ particular front."

Mitch grabbed for his cane, and nearly broke it against Robin's chair in one ferocious rap.

"I do not care for your accessory," Robin told him, with a trace of humor. "It 'smacks' too much of Headmaster." He waited a moment, and knowing Mitch well enough to know his ire always quickly spent, asked, "Someone at the Ministry, then, discreetly informed you of their assisting me in scripting the others?"

"It would be an egregious understatement to answer that only _Seth_ is concerned for your present mental state."

Robin lightly kicked his foot through the paper surrounding the legs of his chair, less colorful but still looking something of a Christmas morning. "You must've bought out Old Rourke's newsstand entire."

Mitch looked sideways, his expression caught between the camaraderie he felt for his friend, the foolishness of his excessive purchase, and his fading tantrum. He was mildly smug. "Well, I didn't buy the American ones," he assured Robin.

A beat passed. "Oh, Lor -" his posture spiked. "You didn't publish in those as well?"

"Mitch," Robin declared, taking on an attitude of public pronouncement. "The Earl and I had a talk, a meeting of the minds. I am now, in the wake of his passing, to be about finding things. And I find," he spoke on, "that the only thing I care to find - with any constancy - is whatever there can be to be known about Marion that last day." He looked to his friend, saw the aversion to meeting his gaze. "We are still ourselves, Mitch," he spoke with sincerity, hurt showing up in the lines about his eyes. "Why do you do that? I expect you continually. I anticipate running into you everywhere. And when I turn to speak to you, you are so seldom..." He shook his head lightly, slowly. "You are not..."

"I am not there," Mitch nodded his head. "And how _can_ I be there? When I cannot even say her name to you? When my own life is bisected into two portions: before that day, and now, after? When there, in the middle of the black emptiness of the friend I love I - _I_ found such happiness? How can I look at that? Knowing that, living that, how can I look at _you_?"

"Mitch," the word swelled with significance. "I love you," Robin said, his manner far from troubled in the wake of Bonchurch's fraught confession. "Naturally I have thought upon this a great deal. And I think of blame. The blame that I naturally assign to myself. That you and Allen assign to _your_selves. That for many years I echoed. The blame that even the pilot," he had never been comfortable with the Carter name, "may yet today feel - should he know the end result of his daring escape for the woman who made it possible."

Bonchurch's eyes grew wider as he waited to see where this unexpected line of reasoning might end, but his head he bowed.

"It is all shite, Mitch. It is all us at pretending (wishing, even) that the world dependably turns according to the strength of _our_ will, _our_ actions. Thinking, in our vanity, that we could have controlled the force of nature that was Marion when she set her mind to something. Was it my job to protect her, as I had sworn before God and man? _Yes_. Was it in my power to do so when she chose to act recklessly without regard to her own safety?" He did not immediately answer himself.

The air had enough time to grow thick with silence before he continued. In gentlest fashion, he lifted and then re-sat his empty glass upon the small table beside his chair. So lightly the action made almost no sound. "I will gladly answer that question for you," Robin said. "Only, the answer comes to me differently each day of the week. What remains is this: that night cannot be fixed by blame. It cannot be fixed by tears or falling upon one's sword. And what I am left with is simply, wanting to learn what I can of my wife. Of what happened once she left Allen, once she left the flyer. I have read his debrief at the Ministry. Many times. His account of that night is most impressively exact. Right down to the moment he sees her taken by Gisbonnhoffer. But there are still two things I do not know of that day: what happens after that - the lack of which I have sought to remedy with these printed notices - _and_, your memories of unexpectedly meeting her earlier in the day."

Mitch sucked in his breath at Robin's last words. It was as though someone had plunged a lance into his chest. _Through_ his chest. "But how could I ever - could I ever...tell you?" he begged, his mouth turning dangerously down in both corners. "How can I make you go back? How can I go back and..."

"Because I ask you to. Because it is what I want. What I want to find, to know, in your own words. And with as much detail as possible." His chin tucked and he looked at his friend up through his lashes. "Won't you tell me?"

Mitch gaped, gob-smacked, at Robin. His eyes refused to blink, growing dry and sore in their frightened, shocked stare. He knew Robin had read what there was to read of the entire unit's MI-6 debriefs upon their return. Once he had been physically able, it had been his duty as commanding officer to read and correct them where needed, bring them into harmony where he could. Mitch had, naturally, mentioned Marion's appearance at Eva's cottage that day, but beyond saying that she had arrived, and (wretched he was in the relating of it) that it was through her he learnt of Stoker's rescue and escape planned for that very night, he had found no need (nor received any prompting questions on the matter) for SIS to know the details, the smallish things one might tell a friend about such an occasion.

For the past years he had operated under the assumption that to mention any such things to Robin would be, to their friendship, catastrophic. And to his own psyche, reliving such a juncture in which he precipitated the greatest tragedy in Robin's life, deleterious. It was something he had only shared with Eva. Because, of all the people in all the world, he could tell her anything. She had been witness to his treason (to friend and King), to his disgrace, the failure of his loyalty. The breaking of his oath. _She_ could think no differently of him, as she was so intimately knowledgeable of his personal weakness.

And yet here was Robin, _begging_ to be told. Robin, wishing to reopen old wounds. Or were the wounds mostly imagined? And mostly on his part? Since the war Mitch knew he had kept himself somewhat distant from his friend, removed even when they occupied the same spaces. Convinced the day would come when he would answer for what he had done, and knowing that he had not yet found the proper answer _to_ it.

And yet here was the day. And the answer he had so long dreaded giving was not to be required. It was only that Robin wished his memory. Wished to share in recalling the story of the day that he discovered he was not in France at all; the location of his imprisonment, his ability to escape or find rescue swimming about in the blue of Lady Marion's unexpected, but familiar eyes.

With an exhale he let his back curve into the stuffing of the leather chair. He wanted to signal Rhu Salaam to deliver him a drink, but when he looked over to make a sign, he saw that Robin had already done so, and the barman was bringing it over to him on one of the saloon's small trays - like the old days. He looked to Robin, and brought his gaze to bear on the narrow band that had once been pried from the leg of a misguided illusionist's lost dove, and now adorned the pinkie of his best friend in the world. He wanted to grab that hand in his, to clasp it with the fervor of a thousand missed opportunities over the last years, but recalling to himself that he was at the club, he did not. He felt as though he had not seen Robin - not really - since that last breakfast at La Salle's when he agreed to escort the no-longer-kidnapped Marion back to Sark's German garrison.

He looked up at his friend's face, letting all the fear, the anguish of everything that came after - everything that he had allowed to grow up between them - fall away like the burdens of Christian, turning his back to the City of Destruction, the promise of Beulah in view, and Robin, his Robin, there to walk the Valleys with him.

"Well," he began, "there was, there was...a pickle barrel," and he felt the surprising tugging of a small smirk upon his lips. "A smallish one, of course. She couldn't have managed a larger one, naturally..."

* * *

><p><strong>GUERNSEY - late in July, the first month of Occupation, before the Germans have lock-tight secured the entire island - 1940 -<strong> _Mental checklist: One, find accomplice with as much to lose as do you. Two, provide wireless to accomplice. Three, test transmission. Four, think of discreet way to make the time of future broadcasts known._

Marion always enjoyed such tick lists. They organized her mind, straightened her thoughts, and with them she had always managed to accomplish much.

_One, tick_. Mr. Thornton, who had given her his radio equipment to hide. He had every bit as much to lose in the doing of this as did she. So she trusted him.

_Two, tick_. He had no wireless, so she supplied one, though he would only agree if she promised to remove it from his cottage again following the test run.

_Three, pending. _

_Four, further pending_.

Tick lists. Certainly she was in need of them now, her mind scattered, her emotions running high, and never more risk involved in the decisions she made than right now.

She stood among the half-cellar of the old Barnsdale windmill, still not sure she should chance staying on premises once she set the needle into the groove of her chosen record and depressed the long-unused 'transmit' button.

She forced her shaking hand to move across the record's surface with the polish cloth. Willed her mind to concentrate only on her list.

* * *

><p>"Milady?" Clun had found her, where she had been fooling around at the piano. "Mr. de Lacey has come calling for Sir Edward."<p>

Her eyebrows raised in question. _Why was Clun informing __her__ of her father's caller? Was Sir Edward incapacitated this afternoon? Had something gone amiss with her father and she had not been told?_

"I believe Sir Edward is in his sunroom," she offered, thinking the butler could not locate Barnsdale's master (though this seemed unlikely in the extreme).

"Yes, erm...I did not think it..._best_...to present Mr. de Lacey in his _current_ condition."

Her brow constricted. "Mr. de Lacey is in a 'condition'?"

"Will you come, Lady? I have had him brought in to your father's study."

_'Brought' in?_ Marion rushed out of the sitting room and toward the smaller, more intimate space that had once served as her father's office away from London. A space to which Joseph de Lacey, who had served intermittently as Lord Nighten's island-based clerk, would be no stranger.

It had been with de Lacey that her father had been planning his memoirs just prior to his riding accident. De Lacey who handled Lord Nighten's affairs as needed when Marion was away. Certainly he could not have come expecting to find work in the wake of the Occupation. His own home was well on the other side of St. Peter Port. With the new German ban on civilians use of autocars, it would have been no casual trip.

Before she could open the unusually shut-upon-a-guest study door (her own steps there outpacing Clun's, preventing _him_ from his job of holding the door for her), it burst open upon her, de Lacey staggering forward from the blast of strength it had taken for him to open it. She had no time to take a reasonable inventory of him or his condition before he collapsed into her surprised arms, staining the shoulder of her blouse with the blood on his face.

"Good," the man choked out. "I thought I might have to come find you..." before going into a swoon.

When she and Clun managed to rouse him, and with what was left of his own power, help him into a chair, his impatience was no lessened. "I am sent as messenger," he told her, his eyes not seeming to register the presence of Clun, nor, at this stage, the lack of Sir Edward.

"But what sort of message could you possibly bring us - in this state?" she asked, referencing his badly-beaten condition. She recalled to herself that his wife, Ruth, deceased, had been a Jewess. That his second son had left the island for his education and become - so his proud father had let it be known - cantor in a Weymouth synagogue.

"The Germans instruct me to tell you that you may stay on here at Barnsdale and live under what they call 'Lieutenant Gisbonnhoffer's generosity' if your father will agree to retract his monograph in full, and in print."

"So we must leave Barnsdale," she told him pragmatically, as she held iodine up to one of his still-bleeding cuts.

He shook his head, not noticing the sting of the antiseptic. "Worse. If he declines their offer, it will mean deportation for Sir Edward, whom they denounce as a threat and a British diplomat. Deportation to the Continent, and an internment camp for political dissidents. Where 'he might join those his monograph chooses to champion,' they said."

"And Herr Geis himself is behind this?" _Why should it have surprised her?_ "The coward, to attack you and task you with delivering _his_ ultimatum."

"This is no mere SS maneuver to ensure Gisbonnhoffer's takeover of the estate, I assure you," de Lacey swore. "It was the Gestapo who arrested and detained me over the past two nights." He pulled papers from within his coat, unavoidably dotting the typewritten pages of manuscript with his blood. "They have already written what they wish him to sign." He extended it to Marion.

She took it, snatching it from his hands as though he were a child, and in danger from it as a small one might be of a lit match.

"Mr. Clun," she ordered the butler. "See to Mr. de Lacey. Whatever he needs. I need some time to...look this over..." To prevent the further tremor of her hand, she closed it about the manuscript pages more tightly, paying no mind to the sound of their crumpling.

* * *

><p>It was not, to be exact, a quick walk - or a particularly scenic one, but she made her way without truly thinking to a far patch of the estate. A spot which still received the benefit of the gardeners' landscaping and attention, but one to which she (or anyone) rarely ventured. Upon arriving under the large tree that shaded a small, fenced cemetery plot, she paused to catch her breath, her hands to the cast-iron finials of the railing.<p>

Time before recent memory a chapel - the estate's chapel - had stood alongside here. Now all that remained of its walls and foundation was the occasional pretty stone, and the burial plots of Barnsdale's long-ago family. At least one marker had a date in the early fifteenth century. Others, the late eighteenth.

The ground beyond the gate was uneven and undependable due to its shifting contents, given to swells and soft places. The chapel had served the estate, and the nearby village and outlying areas (little of which was now left, save the random cottage, such as the Heindl's, a well dug here and there). Barnsdale House as it stood now had come, of course, in the latter part of that history. There were none with the Nighten name laid to rest in this cemetery. Even so, she knew it was her father's wish to end here, on his beloved island, rather than be returned to the Nighten mausoleum at Lincoln Greene. Knew that it had always been his intent.

She felt the paper still in her hands. She could wait no longer to review it.

* * *

><p><strong>LONDON, West End - Mayfair - Edward, Lord Nighten's Georgian town house - 1937 -" <strong>How many copies have we?" Sir Edward asked his daughter and ad hoc assistant, Marion.

"Only the one. I am working on transcribing the second, and incorporating the edits we had discussed," she informed him, rubbing her thumb over the ink stain growing (to her mother's dismay) ever-larger on her first finger.

They had been working on this particular treatise off and on for nearly thirteen months. Once Robin Oxley had left for his annual holiday in France with his father (for which at least three-quarters of the ink stain upon her finger could be blamed), she had begun pursuing work on it in earnest, eager to complete it and see her father publish it.

"Well, I had thought to give one to Clem," her father ruminated aloud, "but only for spotting any technical slip-ups you and I have overlooked. Certainly not for any political slant. It needs no critique on that front, and surely I need hear no more on your brother's peculiar politics than I already do," he let a spark flit to the corner of one of his eyes, lightening his dismissive remark for his daughter's benefit. "But I _will_ have our completed draft for your mother."

"Mother?" Marion could not control her shock from where she sat across the library from his desk. "I cannot think _she_ will care to notate any needed corrections, or misspelled words."

"Goodness, no!" Edward chuckled in agreement, putting on his bifocals, stretching their wire frames about his ears.

"Then why give it her?"

"Do not worry yourself about it, Daughter," he told her as he apprised the typing job on the draft through his lenses. "_Your_ position is in no danger." He leaned forward over the blotter upon his desktop, bringing his eyes to look out over his spectacles. "Your enthusiasm on this project in particular is commendable."

"Thank you, Father," she had told him solemnly, his approval and commendation sparingly given.

He paused a moment before adding, "Against such men, such repellent dogma I find that I think; I would sacrifice everything, _gladly_ to put an end to them." He leaned into the back of his chair, lightly slapped a hand to his desktop. "I know our work is only a mere paper, not an opening salvo in a first skirmish. But I feel no less passionate for that fact. I need only consider: what lengths would I not go to were I to find your mother - or you - at the mercy of such men? Such ideology? _Now_ is the time for philosophical pleas, political debate, the time to inspire our countrymen to action. Soon, though, _soon_," he warned, with the prescience of both an informed parliamentarian and former military man, "we must have action if we are to halt that which is coming." Not waiting for her reply, he rose to leave, taking their draft with him.

That evening she had overheard the first of many disagreements to come between her parents.

* * *

><p><strong>Barnsdale - 1940 -" <strong>_Please consider your terms accepted, the persuasion of your particular messenger and his relative condition effective in the extreme_," Marion wrote back to the island's Gestapo head, going on to inform him that she would comply with the demands in order that she and her father might retain both their freedom and the ability to reside in their home and upon their rightful property as guests of the Occupying force (and in particular of Lieutenant Gisbonnhoffer) but that, she felt it her duty to point out, she would need to tinker with the syntax of the Deutsch pre-scripted retraction in order to fulfill the demand that it be rendered convincingly.

In short order (by the next afternoon) her amendments to their terms were accepted, and her work on behalf of her father on this long-standing topic was renewed.

The monograph that had capped Sir Edward Nighten's vaunted place in British history was to now receive its final revision.

* * *

><p>Joe de Lacey had again returned to Barnsdale, his cuts and bruises from the Gestapo-orchestrated beating scabbed over, greening-up, and healing.<p>

"We are used, of course," he shared the memory with Lady Marion, "to receiving the galleys to proof - not the finished publication, are we not?" His face grew downcast. "Spoiled, there, I suppose."

Taking the leaflet from him, she had nothing for a reply, save her grim expression.

"Did he take it hard when you took it to him to sign?" de Lacey asked, uncertain of the method via which Sir Edward had been informed of the retraction, Marion's edict being that in de Lacey's present state, the less her aged father saw of his former clerk - knew of his deliberate assault - the better.

"He was very tired at the time," Marion confessed truthfully, though not telling de Lacey that she had not revealed to her father what it was he was signing. "Rather than reading it, he said he 'put his faith in me'."

"Oh, I am sorry at that, Lady Marion," de Lacey commiserated, not saying what they both felt; that they had perpetrated a singular betrayal of both Sir Edward and themselves. "I have only been given a copy in the language of the Hun," he went on. "Would you...read it for me?" his own German being remedial at best. "Just so that I may know the...full scope of it?"

"Yes," she answered, distractedly. She had been at eyeing the several other notices and columns in the publication. "They will not be fool enough to attempt to distribute it here, in English," she assured him. "Father's condition is too well-known on these islands for anyone to believe him in his right mind and full capacity denouncing his entire credo."

"In time they shall, though, don't you think?" he asked. "Believe it?"

"In time _we_ shall still have our home here, and _your_ personal health shall retain its returning stoutness," she gave him as rejoinder, though in her heart she wondered at her own optimism in the pronouncment of such.

She did as he asked, translated the recanted monograph aloud as he listened on intently.

It had not seemed possible that the words, rendered aloud in English, could have a sound more harsh - more bitter - than they had when she had written them in German.

* * *

><p>"My Lady," Gisbonnhoffer had called out to her later the next afternoon. He had searched her out, having learned from the staff that she had gone riding. Something had drawn her, and she was relatively close to the windmill in which she had hidden so many illicit things prior to the Germans landing.<p>

She turned Gypsum toward the sound of the lieutenant's voice, but let him stand so that the horse-shy Gisbonnhoffer encountered the formidable width of the highly-strung stallion's flank, impeding him from continuing his approach upon the spotty path.

"You _are_ forbidding today," Gisbonnhoffer offered what was his version of a flirt. "Every inch the vedette," he told her with a tone of approval, assuming she would appreciate the compliment of being compared to a mounted military sentinel which would be located in advance of pickets. Double insurance to protect the army against surprise attacks.

Marion let her eyeline range over him, her seat in the saddle of a horse sixteen hands high an easy excuse, her desire to be alone on such a day (well, of late on any day, really) the true reason.

She knew he wanted her to dismount, could feel it in the atoms swirling about him - to walk Gypsum as she walked beside _him_. Without addressing this desire of his, she did move the horse so that it would walk alongside Gisbonnhoffer while she maintained her spot above him, the German lieutenant's shoulder to her knee.

He spoke of many things, and she let him. His running conversation prevented her from having to engage herself too much with him. She gave sounds of assent - of attention - from time to time. Little more.

"There has been a rash of suicides, you may know," he was saying. "A dismaying response to the news of Occupation, really, to both _our_ leaders _and_ those at the States," he mentioned the Guernsey governing body, to which he had been tasked as military liaison, his post in occupation a civic one. "Jodderick," he name-dropped the Guernsey bailiff, "tells me the newest one was a friend of Sir Edward's."

At this she reactively reigned in Gypsum, causing him to pull-up short and the lieutenant to find himself several paces to the lead.

Geis' turned his head to look up and back at her. "Joseph de Lacey? I am told he once stood as your father's island clerk."

She did not ask any questions. The Germans could have gained nothing by killing de Lacey. They had had of him what they needed. Conclusion: the Germans had not killed Joseph de Lacey.

An idea - rather, the disavowal of an idea - had killed him.

"I should like to ride on alone, Herr Geis," she told her escort, never lowering her chin to his level. Her tone was cool, distant. "I am sure you will understand."

In a moment of mannerly flourish, Gisbonnhoffer inclined his head respectfully and stepped clear of horse and rider with the slightest hint of a bow, allowing her access to the full breadth of the path, unobstructed.

* * *

><p>"Look at you," her father had marveled only hours ago as he caught her out before she had snuck away from Barnsdale. "Still, here on holiday, but keeping such midnight hours? Any soldier would think you'd drawn the ire of your commanding officer and in punishment been assigned the duty of permanent night watch."<p>

She had smiled absently at him, knowing he only understood what he saw before him to be his daughter ready to again haunt the house library until the wee hours, as was her usual way.

"A young lady of quality up and about at such hours would have created scandal in my day," he tried to impress upon her how times had changed. "I cannot think any parent would have sanctioned it!" Here he paused to raise a finger in conspiratorial clarification. "Although I must confess to knowing precious little about the private lives of young ladies of my day," and his own smile had sparked at his small joke.

* * *

><p>Her mind burned with the news of de Lacey's suicide. With the personal betrayal that she saw as her own that had precipitated it. Had he been there to hear it she would have give a staccato laugh for Gisbonnhoffer's sake. She had no intention of being his imagined vedette, a mere sentry.<p>

No, she had purposed in the hours since she had learned of de Lacey's act of despair to turn picador. Like the horseman in a bullfight she knew better than to think she was destined (or equipped) to become matador. But jabbing the bull with a lance to weaken it where she could? To prepare it for its coming destruction? _This_ she could do.

If an idea, or the renunciation of such - mere words - could kill Joe de Lacey, then the expression of an idea, the exercise of it in song and spoken word could bring something to life. Could give those teetering on their despair, as had he, _something_ to grab onto.

She reached her hand toward the transmission button, set the needle into the groove, and _Rule, Britannia_ shot out from the Barnsdale windmill onto the illegal airwaves above Guernsey like the report of a rebel gun.

Marion Nighten was at war.

**...TBC...**


	6. Chapter 6A

**A/N:** Please consider this brief bit part of an incompletely posted Chapter Six. (In my plan there is certainly meant to be a second section to it for it to be whole and as conceived, so this is Ch. 6-A; Ch. 6-B to come.)

There has been an unexpected death in my immediate family.

* * *

><p>"<em>We lived like a family; my mother, grandmother and Zara. Certainly, to all outward appearances we were so: a collection of relatives agreeing to make a life together, to share space and common concerns. But in the years since the war I had worked hard to forget: there are other ways in which to be related. That more than blood ties might obligate you toward another. That the past remains a living thing inside many of us, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not: a garden, growing lushly in the daylight, informing our days by producing that upon which we nourish ourselves, or, mushrooms, proliferating in the damp of total darkness, fed upon manure, smelling strongly, and potentially poisonous unto death. <em>

_That inasmuch as affection might bind two people—or a group—together, so might difficulty. So might disaster." - _**Thomas Carter, notebook #17, year 1954**

**Hoboken, NEW JERSEY - 832 King's Court - Spring 1954 –** Once again the phone rang, the particular series of rings in the party line distinguishing it as meant for the Carter family rattling up and down the hardwood of the first floor hallway.

It was half-past midnight.

_Ring, ring-ring. RIIIIIIIING._ It begged to be answered.

Olive Carter stood in the hallway, staring at Bell's device with a horrified expression seared into her face. The light from her nearby bedroom cast the only illumination into the hallway; little more than a long, slender-but-fanning-out shaft slanting from the open door behind her.

"Someone is dead. _Someone._ I know it. For what other reason would a call arrive so late?" she bemoaned, "Who could it be?" loud enough so that her son and granddaughter overheard her as they descended the stair.

Even in Olive's woken-from-sleep state no trace of her prior life existed within her voice. No telltale accent or immigrant's awkwardness in phrasing. In the intervening years since her arrival in America her transformation into what she understood to be an American born-and-bred had become complete.

Her aged mother-in-law wondered at times whether Olive even recalled that she had not, technically, been born in New York State, as she tended to answer whenever asked. Wondered if Olive had gone from knowingly fabricating the late Mr. Carter, her fictional husband, to full-on thinking he had once existed, rather than remembering that she was in point of fact still married to the father of her son, a man who had become inextricably trapped in a warring Russia that had soon devolved into a closed Communist State. A man who could very well yet be alive. Alive, but unreachable, hidden from them by that Iron Curtain.

Olive's mother-in-law had long clung to that notion, that unverifiable possibility._ Hadn't Alexsei, after all, returned from the war with news that he had met a woman who claimed to have known him? _

* * *

><p>The phone rattled again. Answering Olive's present fears, her son reminded his mother; "We don't know anyone," between rings.<p>

"Certainly not anyone we would need to be told of past nine o'clock," echoed in agreement as Tamara Sergeiovna labored down as far as the lower landing, where she reached for the steadying grasp of her great-granddaughter's hand.

Olive's only child, Thomas, made a purposeful movement toward the phone, casting his eyes from one woman in his household to the next, their nervous (fearful, even) expressions of what the unexpected call might bring, what chaos or tragedy it might throw their world into not lost on him.

He lifted the bell-shaped receiver to his ear, holding the slender neck of the telephone to bring the trumpet-shaped microphone portion to his mouth.

"Hello?" he enquired of the device, his tone not entirely conversational, as always with him, potential confrontation ever at the ready.

The line crackled in his ear. "A Mr. Allen Dale calling collect for Mr. Tom Carter at this _num_-bah," the operator chipperly sang out, no 'er' in her 'er's. "Will you accept the charges?"

* * *

><p><strong>Atlantic City, NEW JERSEY – 6<strong>**th**** Precinct's Drunk Tank – after midnight – **His mind was no longer victim of the fog of alcohol that had seen him attempt to tussle with a Bobby. Correction, a _cop_.

Might've been better if it _had_ been.

"Dale!" the officer manning the single phone available for lock-up calls shouted, and Allen Dale stepped forward the few paces from the front of the queue. Correction, _line_.

Something about getting pissed- Correction, _drunk_-seemed to bring out the Brit in him, seemed to wipe away the fact that he had come to this country following the war and the formal disbanding of Unit 1192 nearly seven years ago, and not simply just yesterday. As though inebriation had the effect of reducing him somehow to his purest form, which for him was apparently nearly one-hundred percent London guttersnipe, not a bit of polish about him.

It was a relief to him to step clear of the persistent singing of the man to his rear, who had, in _his_ intoxication, been at re-chanting the same tune _ad nauseum_.

"_A greyhound who had lots of speed was surely bound to fail/For morning, noon and evening, he was chasing his own tail/He was running around in circles, Running around in circles/Getting nowhere...getting nowhere/Very fast." _

The chap started up again.

After two hours of this in lock-up, unable to duck the sound of this man's voice, Allen's dismay must've shown clearly on his growing-hung-over face.

The officer gave a grunted chuckle. "A regular of ours," he shared with humor in his eye. "Thinks he's '_der Bingle_'."

Irritated guttersnipe he was, the cop's attempt at humor rubbed Allen the wrong way, and he fell back on a snide retort. To which, of course, the copper took exception.

"Well forgive us all if it ain't _Danny Boy_," the cop turned sarcastic in the face of Allen's scorn and unmistakable accent.

"I'm not _Irish_," Allen protested, disbelief in his brow at how few Yanks could tell an Irishman from a Cornishman from a Scot from an Afrikaner.

The cop registered irritation at Allen's verbal slap, and returned to his former grumpy self. "Yeah," he returned, "well, unlike _you_, Bub, _he'll_ call his 'Bob Hope' and be outta here in no time." He gave a momentary grin more gritted teeth than actual smile.

"Nice," Allen replied. "Nice," knowing that this was the same cop he was going to have to ask to get into what had been taken from him upon his arrest so that he could find where he had several weeks ago written the only telephone number that he could now think of to call. Correction-_ring_.

* * *

><p><strong>Hoboken, NEW JERSEY - 832 King's Court –<strong> "Brief spot of trouble is all, no biggie," Allen attempted to assure Carter over-the-phone once the former flyer had agreed to accept the charges for his call.

"You want someone to bail you out." Carter had a bald way of simply stating what you wanted, rather than asking.

"Well, it would be nice. This is no place to spend one's spare time."

"Why use your one phone call on me?" Carter asked, not for a moment taken in by the light-and-carefree tone Allen had affected since the operator had given the line over to them.

He heard Dale give a hard scoff.

"I'm not like you, now am I? No mum, no grandmumma. It's not like _I_ got anyone else to call, is it, now?" Dale's voice turned harsh and darkened. "Everyone _I_ know is an ocean away or six feet under. You're it, Carter. It's you, or I have to call the ex if I want to get outta here." There was a pause as his voice modulated into something resembling a plea. "Don't make me do that."

Carter could imagine the former chauffeur shaking a bowed head.

"I don't wanna do that."

"What's bail?" asked the former Flight Commander, as in the old days every bit as alert as if it were noon and him contemplating a day-trip down to Atlantic City, rather than gone midnight.

* * *

><p><strong>ALDERNEY – Treeton Camp – September 1943 –<strong> Daylight fell through the incompletely joined horizontal planks that made up the shared wall of the freestanding officer's double privy, dust and ephemera swimming in its shafts.

Jerry fag clamped between his lips, the Kommandant's driver was taking a piss. Staring down into the blackness of the pit that descended from the hole before him, he heard the rough wooden door to the other side open and familiarly slam shut. Heard the wooden block's squeaky turn to prevent the door being opened from the outside—a small privacy few of the men bothered themselves with. The doors had been fashioned to hang shut, helped along by a spring, after all.

The wall separating the two halves of the small building was as breezy and as made up of unfilled chinks as those facing the exterior—a privy too airtight a favor to no one.

It should not have surprised him to hear the other person every bit as well as if they had been standing directly next to him. _However..._ There was a shuffling, and then a stop.

"Mr. Allen," came the clear but quietly intense sound of a voice—a _woman's_ voice. "I see you there!"

Though nearly at the end of his task, Allen jumped as though the exposed part of him had been stung by a bee. His eyes shot over toward the dividing wall, the space lit well-enough that he could see the concerned eyes of Lieutenant Gisbonnhoffer's secretary without needing to strain, and could discern that she, certainly, could see rather more of him than he felt comfortable with in that particular situation.

Immediately he bounced on his heels, efficiently pulling up his trousers and stowing himself again within his chauffeur's uniform.

It took only a moment to do so. _Out of sight, out of min_d. Re-composed, he stepped directly toward the wall and the pair of eyes so inconsistent with the tacit barbarism of such a place. Such a war.

"But a tick," he called to mind the press of time, though she was usually cautious enough for both of them, information she passed able to be shared quickly, discreetly, and in full view of the guardhouse during her brief, permitted visits outside the officer's building.

Certainly her following him to the privy being about as different from their usual interactions as possible.

"I will not apologize," she informed him. "Though I see I have startled you."

He ignored the question she raised of his momentary (and uncharacteristic) modesty. "Will you not be seen comin' in here?" he questioned, looking about him, this shed that amounted to a toilet rough and disgusting, for all that it was 'officers only'.

"It is where I am expected to…" her voice trailed off, even in the midst of the harsh truths of her life, unwilling to be purposefully coarse.

Allen held back a wince, a talent he was putting to almost 'round-the-clock use since the unit had become stranded upon these oppressed islands.

"Yes," he agreed hastily, trying not to show irritation that her captors would not even offer her the privacy and gentility of a loo of her own, even were it to be only a chamber pot, instead forcing her to go bog among their own filth and excrement. "Well then, best be to it." He crouched down slightly to bring his eyes to a level with her own. "For certain they know how long I been in here a'ready."

Her eyes (all that he could see of her face, save what there was of the upper bridge of her nose dividing them one from another) were wide with alert, more than a little like an animal that knows it is being stalked, attentive to any sound or fluctuation about them, a rabbit ready at a moment's notice to dart away. Alderney was flush with wild hares. Here, he thought, here he had found yet another.

"A man at the Lackland Camp," she (unaware of his inner dialogue) referenced another of the island's prison camps, this one the Kommandant's Alderney HQ. "_Your_ man?" she asked uncertainly. "If his name is Windhover, and he supplies Kommandant's table...his safety is gravely compromised. The Kommandant and Lieutenant have discovered his anti-Occupation activities. He is to be found guilty of spying by a military court, and is to be taken into custody before curfew today."

_Would it never fail to kick him in the gut?_ This topsy-turvy new life wherein rather than _being_ an operative run by a higher-up he was now himself at running a growing-more complicated spy network? And all the while putting on mask after mask after mask in order to conceal-even from what should have been his compatriots-his own, true loyalties? _And_ the existence of the unit?

He was a short-grift to them, the islanders he met, the Jerries. On-the-make, Black Market, bit o' gambling, get you what you need. Anya Grigorovna proved to be one of the few among his contacts who believed-seemed to intuit on some level, though he frequently worked ('til this point) to de-bunk it-that he was a touch more than a mere chappie looking to score and get ahead for purely selfish reasons.

"You gave chase all the way out here, risking yourself, just to tell me that?" He let false joviality (though it sounded entirely persuasive) coat his question. "If he's done for, he's done for," he told her, not admitting that he had any connection to Windhover.

"Risk?" she asked him, her eyes wide with disbelief at his casual response to her news. "The life of a man? A good man? In the face of that, how can I think about risk?" In her passion she had slipped the fingers of her left hand over the slat at her eye level, trying to bring her face closer to the partition that separated them, to better take the measure of him.

"_How_ can you not?" he intently whispered. "They've got you by the short-" he paused, awkwardly editing himself, "end of the stick, here. You _daren't_ risk yourself more. Kommandant and his lieutenant are dangerous men."

"And so you will just stand by?" She sounded of a child confused by her sums. "Do nothing?"

"Do nothing? Aye," he agreed to the course of non-action. "As I did when the British government went to war, and asked the island men to fight." He dressed his statement up in relaxed, careless informality and non-concern. "Why else do you think I am still island-bound? A healthy bloke like meself? If I did not choose to fight then, why would I do now?" He gave an exaggerated nod. "Do nothing? _Aye_. As will you ere the day come this dogsbody should run afoul of _its_ master."

"As you will do if I am caught and disappeared?" she asked him, but she did not accuse him.

No, he read the rest in her eyes, though she did not speak it, her nascent understanding of his queer, reversed hypocrisy.

_Even as __you__ stand here, _she was thinking_, invested enough in the risks taken by a mere prisoner to whom you have no connection that you are at wasting valuable time scolding her?_

With only her eyes on his, with no other observances or information to go on, she had caught him out as a fraud. Partially his fault-he was too moved by her plight, too affected by her out-of-place presence here among such horror that he often tripped up in playing her off. Partially her own shortcoming: she was far too willing to believe a man noble rather than a coward, rather than an opportunist willing to profit from the suffering of others, so long as he did profit.

As they had never spent such a close or lengthy interval with one another, he had never encountered her this intimately before; never been able to read so clearly how close she was to sussing him.

Again, without confessing any connection to this soon-to-be-arrested Windhover, he warned her; "only, pray this chap-in-peril of yours knows no names to give them, or that he dies before he can reveal them. _That_ is what you may do." His mouth shut and turned hard for a moment. Not letting it rest like that for too long, he again turned breezy. "And tell me again why you will not let me contract an escape for you from here." He let his eye half-wink, as though he were asking no more than if she cared to share his hiding place in a round of Olly Olly Oxen Free.

"I will not leave my family," she replied, and he saw the second knuckles of her fingers retreat though the slats as though she were drawing back from him, from his tonal shift, leaving only the tips of her fingers and the rounded ends of her typist's nails. "I have nothing else in the world, nothing of value, or of connection, and they are here, so for whatever it is worth, this has _become_ my world. I share it with them."

It was a reasoning he, with only barely-a-brother left as relation to him in the world, could barely fathom. To choose against flight-against self-when her obvious civilized gentility, her very humanity, was at odds with everything by which she was oppressed here.

He did not reply, and made an effort to not again meet her eyes, casting his glance toward the door, knowing he was cutting it close, his spending a reasonable time at the privy without the guardhouse noting it, or an officer arriving needing a turn at the pit.

"I needn't say," he told the air in front of him, "but give me time to put some distance..." As he pushed wide the door on his exit, the tips of those fingers, that hand-this woman in peril he could never touch, whom he could not comfort, and who would not even allow him to plan her eventual rescue-caught at the edges of his forward vision, and he settled for allowing himself the frivolous momentary lapse of letting his left hand alight for half-a-moment at the slat upon which her fingertips rested. It may have seemed a gesture without thought, without significance. A man pressing his hand into a wall as leverage against opening a door with his other.

But such a door needed no amount of strength to swing it wide, and insignificant gestures of utility rarely caused him, hours hence, to chasten himself for employing them.

It had been the half-shadows in that limited light cast upon her lids, what he could see of the light freckles on the bridge of her nose, he told himself. A 'last round before closing time' sentimentality that had overtaken him, the realization that she had not likely had even an instant of connection afforded by the kindness of a human touch in longer than he probably understood. The utter lack of realization within himself that he, also, was in need of such a touch, such a connection. Of some acknowledgement of what was real.

After all, it was only a palm, the pad just below his dexterous fingers, placed upon the pads of her fingertips. There was nothing erotic, nothing sensual or flirtatious to it. Not even soft. No, in regular life there would have been nothing to it, a mostly rough collision of skin that had lingered one heartbeat too long to be considered accidental.

And hours hence, when he did chasten himself over it, it was an uninteresting decision he had reached. He could not let his instincts lead him so close in the direction of compromising himself-or of misleading her-again.

She was, no matter what she might believe, a woman still with things to lose. And he was a man who must further divorce himself from exercising his basic decency, and not only in matters involving the fragile welfare of imprisoned females.

* * *

><p>Anya Grigorovna might well have devoted more of her time to reviewing the unexpected moment that had transpired between her and the Kommandant's driver in the officer's privy that day, had a quarter of an hour later she not witnessed a man whose familiar visage would have been shocking enough to find in this hellish place, had he not also been laughing on the wrong side of his face.<p>

* * *

><p><strong>Atlantic City, NEW JERSEY – 6<strong>**th**** Precinct – OUTSIDE – **"You cannot have taken a cab _all_ the way here? From Hoboken?" Allen asked Carter incredulously when they had exited the station, his temporary freedom won. "I saw you've a car." He pulled up short. "Haven't you a car?"

"I've a car," Carter agreed, before getting into the taxi.

Allen followed, not relishing the idea of reimbursing Carter the fare for a two hundred-mile roundtrip cab ride from Hoboken.

The cab drove off with them into the night, at returning them to its point of origin, Allen unable to come up with a better solution at present.

It was not long before it came to a stop, though, perhaps ten minutes. Allen, who had been resting his head gratefully against the car's non-jail interior opened his eyes, and registered the surprise of seeing Carter exit. The rear door remained open, and Allen shortly came to realize he was meant to follow. Stepping out, he found them stopped just outside a large open hangar, a small airfield in the distance. The cabbie had pulled up to the hangar door, and Carter was handing over money.

Once the cabbie had pulled away, Carter walked toward Allen, holding out a small packet until Dale took it into his hand.

"I can't have this in my house," Carter told him of the item he had found resting in the bottom of his bathroom bin. He walked past Allen and made his way toward one of the nearby parked planes, and began to ready it for takeoff.

Casting little more than a sideways glance at the item that had been returned to him, Allen opened the wax paper packet, letting the fine powder within it spill onto the side of the pavement, among the dandelions and crab grass. There was no longer any room in his mind for such a detour. He crumpled the now-empty packet and tossed it toward a skip at the side of the building.

Carter continued his work for a bit, until it became apparent to Allen it was time to board. Without invitation, other than the fact that Carter did not warn him away, he made the few steps up and into the small plane.

He turned to proceed to his left and what stood for the cockpit, when something stirred in the plane's rear, among the second (and last) row of two seats. Thinking it, perhaps, Carter's dog, he peeked over, only to find a sleeping girl.

Her hair, in the prerequisite ponytail fashionable for a girl of her age, glowed white in the dim light, she was stretched out across the seats and a box in the aisle to support her midsection, bobby socks upon her shoeless feet.

He could not tell in the light if she were pretty, only that the color of her hair was so striking as to draw the eye.

"What's this, then, when it's at home?" he half-accused Carter of abducting what he assumed was a clear stowaway.

Carter threw an unsurprised glance toward the rear of the plane as he took the pilot's seat and continued to ready for take-off. "That is Zara," he said, fiddling nearby the altimeter, "my daughter." He proceeded to jot something down in his logbook.

Allen had no need to hide his gob-smacked expression. "Who's been at keeping secrets now?" he did accuse, taking a second glance at the girl behind where he stood in the narrow stub of an aisle. "She must be fifteen, easy."

"Spot-on," Carter replied, though without shock or admiration for Allen's typically quick-study, and Allen noted that more British-isms, more Limey sentence construction crept into the former RAF man's speech every moment he spent with him.

"You are an enigma," he scoffed. "All that time, little tyke at home and you never said. You never once said." He paused for a thought. "Did you not know?" he asked.

"I knew," Carter confessed. "By the time I'd been shot down over Burhou, I knew."

Allen climbed forward, into the empty seat beside the pilot. "Not over the water," he said, almost under his breath, a plea.

"It's night," Carter told him, by way of concealing what flight path he planned to take, an eye to examine his passenger's suddenly apprehensive face. "Few lights to be had at this hour once we're out over open country. It all looks like ocean, then. Black."

Allen gulped.

"That why you don't go home?" the man without curiosity, the man without questions, asked, implying that he understood from all that had transpired, all conversation that had passed between them, that Allen had a desire to return home, and nothing keeping him here. Except possibly a dread of water, which to return to England he must travel either over or upon.

"Maybe," Allen confessed, feeling the plane lift, the pull of gravity before they were fully airborne. "But I like it here. I like America. Actually, think it's my kinda place."

Carter could have pressed for more information with 'run of back luck, then?', but remained silent.

"Don't _you_ like it? You're a Yank. Born and bred, wot? You've the means, surely, to go where you'd like," Allen had already tallied what he thought of Carter's financial standing after his visit to 832, "should elsewhere suit your fancy."

"I suppose it is the best possible fit." There was something of a slight shrug about Carter's pilot shoulders.

"Best possible?" Allen questioned the less-than ringing endorsement. His mind settled for a moment on the girl sleeping behind them. Then it flitted about, making connections to other things from the past, stringing them together in a web of what he knew or understood of Carter.

"You know how to keep a secret, Carter, don't you?" he began. "Why, I've heard it from the gang more than once you not only speak English, German like you were a baptized Lutheran, write French so prettily Ox thought you were sketching a seascape, and we know you've got summat of Russian down, for all that you barked the occasional phrase to Djak before she could talk to us herself. And I heard Stephen once say you could speak Serquiaise as though you'd had a Sarkese wet nurse. And that within only months of being on-island." His eyes narrowed. "When I come to your house you sounded like baseball and apple pie and kick the can. You were so American I hardly thought I knew you a few times. And yet now, you've gone back to how you sounded with the unit. More British than not, really." His brow contracted as he considered Carter's ability to chameleon into his surroundings. "You a Jew?" he asked, thinking he had sussed it. "Left Europe for America before the war? Wills always thought you might be. Would explain a lot, he thought." His gaze was keen, ready to gauge whatever answer given.

Carter shook his head, 'no' and shrugged. "I had a Norman tutor," he confessed without elaborating upon how or where, his eyes to the instrument panel. "He taught me Old Norman. It was a hobby of his." He gave a shallow French shrug. "The languages of the islands are not entirely dissimilar."

"A Norman tutor?" Allen was incredulous. A tutor, that spoke of wealth, of privilege. It did not much speak of life at 832 King's Court, Hoboken. "What _are_ you, really?" he asked, a disbelieving grin coming out onto his face. "Did you just drop from the sky one day?" He jerked his head back toward Zara. "Did she?"

"Come, Dale," Carter admonished Allen, dispassionately. "You played with lords. Is it so impossible to imagine there are others in the world beyond your Oxley and your Bonchurch? Beyond the Lady Marion?" There should have been a glitch-moment at the mention of her name, but such was Allen's on-going surprise there was not.

His mouth ran on ahead. "A lord? _You_ lot? Not an _English_ lord. Eagle Squadron was made up solely of Americans."

Carter took a moment to pull up on the stick, and then replied without conviction or regret. "Until I was thirteen I was Alexsei Igorovich, Prince Komonoff." He said it almost as though it were a disinteresting sidelight to their present conversation, though thirty-seven years later he no longer shared it with any distaste or bitterness.

"A ruddy Russian _prince_. All that time. Well, knock me down with a feather. What's that make her mother, then?" Allen asked regarding Zara.

"She has no mother," Carter replied.

"Thought kings or whatever tended to pick out princesses for princes to marry," Allen, finding this all highly amusing, verbally poked.

"I have never been married," Carter answered. "Zara's mother is dead. But yes, I knew from the age of ten whom my parents hoped I would one day wed."

"Really?" Allen asked, curious. "What happened to her?"

"What happened to everyone?" Carter asked rhetorically. "The war. _Wars_. The annihilation of an entire class system."

Allen was still on the joke. "And yet you've got your little princess asleep back there..."

"_Zara_ is asleep back there," a slight edge of warning crept into Carter's voice. "She's not a princess, nor has she been raised to think she's one. She's an American girl. A child of the New World."

At that flare of warning, Allen knew better than to pursue Carter's former nobility any further, for his own amusement or otherwise. "Having to start frightening the boys away from her though, are you?" he asked of fifteen-year-old Zara.

Carter's eyes for a moment flickered away from the lit panel in front of him and cocked at an angle that telegraphed thought. "Wasn't. But then I took on a mechanic, Armstrong. He's turned twitterpated on me. Can barely concentrate on his work."

Allen attempted to commiserate. "And if you let him go you'll be short on help?"

Carter scoffed. "Oh, Zara's twice the mechanic he is. She could service this engine blindfolded and one arm tied behind her back. But she has no passion for it. She likes to fly. Why she came tonight." He gave a light sigh. "Fortunately she doesn't seem to have any particular passion for this Armstrong, either. He's to be twenty next month. Still needs help to change the oil." For a moment he turned smug. "Zara is not impressed."

* * *

><p>It was not yet dawn when they arrived back at King's Court. Carter did not even ask Allen if he would be staying. He simply instructed Allen upstairs to Zara's room for what was left of the night. When Allen moved to protest that he would happily sleep on the downstairs couch, Carter reminded him that he was a man with a fifteen-year-old daughter, and Allen a somewhat notoriously sketchy bloke where women were concerned, and that he, Carter, would be sleeping in easy earshot of the bedroom assigned to him. So Allen found himself thankfully not in a cell, but among flowered wallpaper and feminine linens, on a bed with a lacy dust ruffle. He even surprised himself by managing to drop off.<p>

He was fully awake when, at 9:30 he stepped to open the door and get to the loo to wash his face. It took no time at all before he was pulling the main level's loo door open to walk back into the hallway and see if he might scare up something for his aching stomach.

He nearly jumped out of his skin to open the door only to find Carter standing within inches of it, seeming to loom dangerously over him in the passageway.

It brought Allen immediately to attention.

"What is this all about?" Carter asked without preamble.

He had waited, he had expected an explanation. Simply, he was done dancing at a moment's notice without some reasoning being imparted to him. Certainly he had at this point more than earned the truth, the cause of all this.

When Allen answered, his motivation so much at the ready as to surprise even him, he found himself reverting with surprising ease into the sort of lingo one used when in His Majesty's Service. "I need everything you've got on Anya Grigorovna," he told Carter.

"Then I know a man with a list," Carter replied, ceasing whatever it was he could do that so effectively telegraphed menace. He stepped to the side so that Allen might exit the washroom.

* * *

><p><strong>SARK - La Salle's barnyard - 1943 - <strong>"You do not know our Allen," Johnson's voice tried to reason with Carter who still bouncing on the balls of his feet, no mind to the arm the big man had in a twist in an effort to steer the flyer away from Allen Dale, whom Carter had managed to batter with some force before he was brought under control by the unit's large medic.

"Our Allen would not have done so had he known the truth of this."

"What says he of Grigorovna?" Djak ran to get in front of Carter to ask him in her Russian. She had mistaken the Scottish man's use of 'Allen' for 'Anya', the woman whose ill-treatment had incited the unexpected dust-up outside La Salle's barn.

"He says it is merely idiocy on the part of all that led the chauffeur to entice her to stay and subject herself further to Gisbonnhoffer's assaults," Carter replied, his breath coming in gulps, as John's hold on him prevented his lungs from working as well as they might.

"So now that it is known he will go and get her, and bring her here to safety?" Djak's question was hopeful.

Carter shook his head in the negative. "Your _rom baro_'s best man has been taken by the lieutenant," Carter informed Djak of Bonchurch's capture using terms the Gypsy could understand. "They believe _she_ can be of use to them in getting him released. That will be this clan's priority," he referenced the unit.

Djak looked from Carter's only-now-calming-down face to the bushily-bearded one still holding him in abeyance.

Johnson looked down at the Gypsy boy with the friendliest expression he could muster, though at the moment he was rather distracted, concerned that Carter's rage-filled energy would outlast his own steady strength at restraining him.

"It is the wrong choice to us," Djak told Carter pragmatically, a crease at her brow. "But she is of _our _clan. Not theirs."

Clearly, in the wake of war and displacement, Djak had continued to think of the people he became involved with still in the method of his people; clan, family, relation.

Carter looked at the small Gypsy boy.

The fight went out of him, and he sagged. _Thomas Carter, part of a clan?_ He wanted to employ the American idiom, 'speak for yourself', but he found that not only could he not immediately think of how to phrase it so that it could be understood in the Russian, he could not deny that his visceral actions of the last quarter hour threw such a disavowal of kindred connection entirely into doubt.

**...TBC...**

(in the second installment of same chapter)

* * *

><p><strong>AN:** Yes, _two_ in one entry.  
>I am delighted to announce and encourage those of you that have been reading along that Netflix has available "<em>Enemy at the Door<em>", a 1980 UK series about the Occupation of the Channel Islands, filmed on location (Jersey standing in for Guernsey).

In particular, be certain to check out series two, episode seven, "The Raid", which was filmed entirely on *actual* Sark. It even has scenes at the real Dixcart Hotel, and Creux Harbour.

And, delightfully, it can be watched entirely as a standalone, without knowing anything of the series' characters or plot (it stands well-independently of those). It follows a British commando raiding party, hence the title.

Sark is beautiful and unique, and certainly this film shows it, although it seems to have been filmed in fall/winter, so there is not as much green nor as many wildflowers in bloom as I would expect from my own research.

And for the record, it would seem (for the British, at least-I don't know about the Islanders) the following pronunciations stand: Dixcart = D-cart; Creux = crow; La Coupee* = COOP-ay.

I would recommend without reservation both series/seasons of the show, keeping in mind that some of the production values/lighting are dated, a la 70s/80s BritTV (though being quite spot-on with 1940s period detail, hair and costume), but also mentioning that Allan-A-Dale's father, Alun Armstrong, guest stars in series one (playing a fast-talking Black Marketeer).

* * *

><p>*La Coupee, as shown in the series, is a post-war La Coupee, which was alteredbuilt-up to be less dangerous by German POWs still held and used as a work force on the Channel Islands for a time after the war ended.

The rest of Sark shown, though (despite the series being filmed in the late 70s-early 80s), is true to period, and as it was during the Occupation.


	7. Chapter 6B

_"There is a necessary inertia encountered in all imprisonments. In a solitary confinement this is particularly true. Muscles once sprung with strength and purpose grow slack. Bones begin to feel less substantial. The walls, and especially the doors or other openings about one take on an air of inpregnability, as if leeching a prisoner's own power, own will. A will which is no longer actionable._

_The mind, then, is all that is left. Some men fixate upon women, and their desire (far less satiable than even that of the hunger and social contact denied hourly) - or upon a particular woman. Others pine for what they recall of home, or of safety. Others still feed themselves upon revenge, upon hate and outrage. Many fall into a bottomless vacuum. It is these, especially, captors love._

_Myself, physical incapacitation birthed in me powers and exercises of the mind in regard to recall and memory that before soldiering I would not have thought possible. Every molecule of potential energy unable to be unleashed multiplied within my consciousness as added acuity. I was more alive, more awake, more focused when a captive than ever before._

_And when Gisbonnhoffer had me brought to the cupboard in his office and chained there, thinking he would break me by sheer force of his own perceived supremacy and influence, he did me the greatest possible of all favors: he gave me something to do twenty-four hours every day. He gave me a pastime, and I put it to good use. _

_I listened._

_The most insignificant detail, numbers down to the final digit, I drank it in like an alcoholic who had been trapped at an all-night Temperance rally._

_And the Germans liked numbers. They worshipped documentation, reports and specifics._

_They did not imagine it (did not even know I spoke German), but in that cupboard, shoeless, unbathed, unfed or watered, I was swiftly becoming their encyclopaedia._

_And when it was time, I would see myself delivered into Allied hands; open, and ready for the reading." _

_- _**Thomas Carter, notebook #6, year 1943**

* * *

><p><strong>GUERNSEY - Thornton's Cottage - following Liberation - 1945 -<strong> She heard nothing. Saw nothing, no one. It was as though she were the last girl on earth. A day - possibly two - following her first night here she had thought she heard cannon fire, but decided she had imagined it. Modern-day weapons of war would sound little of antique cannons, she assured herself.

There had been a surrender, then, she had to assume, if the British Navy had come as her father's driver had predicted. She would have rather loved to be there, watching in excitement as they pulled up to the harbour. _Celebrating_. If not in person, then perhaps from the upper floor of Frau Glasson's salon. It had a good view of the harbour. Would there have been a parade? A band? Gay colors - _something?_

No party, no view. She read, reminding herself of a time when a good book was the perfect companion to a solitary meal. She had been solitary enough in those days, in her life at Ripley Convent School. In some way she perhaps relived them now. The quiet, only Nature's noises. Work, of a kind, everything that must be done for herself: washing, mending, tidying, cooking what she could, trying to find things that might be burned for heat or light.

And reading. She was haunted by the texts Mr. Allen had left her. One day they would seem to her, friends - the only intimates she now had. The next they were her enemies: stories of places and lives that held nothing in common with her own. Plots sprung with reason, with purpose and Fate. Her own plot; alone and pointless, drifting without any idea what might come next.

Her father's driver the only other person alive to know where she might be found.

Perhaps he was dead, a victim of the islander violence he had predicted would befall her.

No, escaped to France, more like. Perhaps with her father; evading capture, punishment for their part in the Occupation.

She dreamed the books, the small lives of Middlemarch village, their grandiloquent problems. She dreamed of what India might be like, though she had never seen photographs or paintings of it that she could directly recall. She dreamed exotic; the darkness and uncertainty of caves, of the things that might transpire there, of ancient, overgrown ruins.

She dreamed Peachtree Street in the city of Atlanta, a place, perhaps, more to her ken. Burnt to the ground in the face of an advancing army. She dreamed Tara plantation, still standing like a stone monument to horror, to loss.

And she dreamed Marion.

_How could she not?_

She lived in Marion's house, this cottage that lady's final earthly abode. She slept on what was left of threadbare and rodent-bitten linens, abandoned here for a year when their mistress had never come home.

"Elerinne," she sometimes said her own name aloud, standing at the hearth, imagining Lady Marion just beyond the open door, returning. Imagining it was Marion's voice addressing her. Simply to hear _some_ sound, some human noise.

The cottage worked on her imagination so.

At night, sleeping, she would see Joss Tyr's hand, the familiar scar trauma to the skin from the original explosion that had lost him his fingers. She would see it clasping Lady Marion's, as though it were trying to pull her up from a sucking whirlpool, the base of her finger that had usually worn a slender ring following Sir Edward's death bare, the skin there light, different, so that its outline could still be seen, though the jewelry had been taken from her.

Eleri could envision these things, but knew they were conjecture - a way of her mind reassembling the pieces of what she _had_ seen. The psychic and Lady Marion had not been clasping hands, the blood from the deep slice taken out of Marion's arm was not enough to create a whirlpool, to drown her. No, she had not seen the lady's hand to note the presence or absence of that ring.

Some nights Tyr's hand would flex, spring to life amongst that grisly pile. It would twist back onto his wrist, what fingers were left giving a balletic flourish and producing a blooming rose, magically sprung from the palm, a lone floral remembrance to mark the spot of Lady Marion's passing.

Eleri awoke startled more often than not, but she was almost a twelve-month away from tears and crying jags. Her haunting had become matter-of-fact. Work-a-day.

She lost track of the days early on. She was not long in realizing that the clothing Mr. Allen had packed her off here with was the hardy, still-durable uniform of the Convent. Putting it on, no longer filling it out, she began to wonder if she were falling backward into the past: Imperial India, Confederate America, Provincial Loamshire.

She pondered on the trio of texts he had left her with. _Was there a message in them? Something more than mere words to translate and pass the time?_ Was Mr. Allen, like _Passage_'s doctor Aziz, telling her that they could only truly be friends when the Germans were forever driven out of the Channel Islands?

_But did he not understand that if the Germans were gone, then very likely, she, too, would be?_ Was there any good to be had in a vague, long distance notion of friendship?

She had not realized that she was always at waiting for him until he never came.

Looking over to where _Middlemarch_ lay she told herself, _No_. _No hidden message_. She doubted he had ever even read these books. More likely simply pulled them down on a whim from where they sat shelved together (grouped together she did not know how) upon Sir Edward's library shelves.

They had merely been the right length. That was all. Mind to the task, finish them and then hazard venturing out.

_Seeing someone. Making contact._

Carefully she closed the pages on Rhett Butler bidding to have just one dance at the hospital bazaar with the in-mourning Scarlett.

Food was not so routine nowadays as she would wish to read her way through a meal. The books would wait - _Rhett Butler would wait_ - as did she.

There was little choice in the matter.

* * *

><p><strong>Hoboken, NEW JERSEY - 832 King's Court - Spring 1954 -<strong> Allen Dale found himself, quickly enough, seated at the Carter family kitchen table. It was not grand, as the Nighten's formal dining room at Barnsdale, nor lavishly set as he had encountered that space during the first half of Occupation. Nor was it cozy with intimacy as La Salle's kitchen and trestle table had always been - men at sharing what there was to be had, both of food and of thought, dishes that were a mishmash of material and style, cutlery that seldom matched; few among the cups unchipped. Then, La Salle had never reasonably expected the need to feed and supply nearly ten men in excess of himself within his home. Not to mention the silly insignificance of matching china patterns, or similar crockery, to a blind man.

Eating then was often enough accomplished in shifts, though for the sake of camaraderie as many as possible sat together at table. Dishes and plates had to be waited upon, cups for holding soups or stews. Spoons and forks used as indiscriminately as possible. Oft was the time he had noted Johnson making use of serving-sized utensils in order to ferry food to mouth.

And the special care that had been gone to for Djak - so that she had not had to share dinnerware, her own tiny saucer and mug - fork and knife that had come on her person (their origins remaining unknown) - how she had washed and tended to them with her own hands, those pieces never being shared once Carter had informed the unit of her Gypsy wish for separation in that regard.

Nothing like that, here. Everything needed for a meal, each in its proper place. Yet his eye shot to the hooks that hung the dainty teacups on the hutch. Besides the empty hooks, after accounting for the cups currently in use, one additional hook empty, its cup sitting, more clutter than display, below it. Its handle mended but unable any longer to bear its own weight.

He did not allow himself to dwell on the image.

An older woman was at the table, now, her knuckles, swollen with age, snapping beans for a future meal.

"Babushka, this is Allen Dale," Carter had introduced him to his elderly - yet far from frail looking - grandmother.

She was seated next to the daughter, Zara, at the table he had shared short days ago with Carter as the flyer had eaten breakfast. In the late morning light, the girl Zara's hair had lost none of its startling whiteness. Her eyes were clear and bright, and edged (though not fully shot-through) with an intensity to rival her father's.

The grandmother's posture, her complete air of self-possession immediately recalled to Allen's mind the new information that Carter was, in fact, not only a Russian, but a _prince_. Allen had but a moment to recollect this and to encounter her - he could think of no better word for it than 'presence' - wondering if Carter's princeliness made her, wot, a queen? when, in response to the introduction, he blurted, "Your Worship," as way of greeting.

There may have been a momentary hitch in the smoothness of that exchange, but the old girl regally (truthfully, he felt in that moment he was meeting with Queen Victoria, though the woman opposite him was decidedly less plump) extended her hand, which he took, and at a loss, raised at least partly to his mouth in salute, if not in actual physical contact.

Granny's eyes quick-focused on his face, and he knew that, however foolish he might have looked, she had the good breeding to take his greeting in the spirit it was meant, rather than in the bumbling way it was delivered.

Nearby the sink, he heard something of a snort at this interlude, and before the moment became further gruesome, Carter introduced his mother, an Olive Carter, whose bearing (thankfully) was pretty much matched by any of one-thousand women you might meet on the subway traveling downtown any day of the week.

"You know my son from the war," she said, making a final pass with her cloth in drying a dish. A skepticism - possibly a fear - lingered in her expression.

"We have greatly enjoyed your greeting cards," Queen - Babu... - _Grandma_ said.

"My cards?" Allen asked, brows contracting, not yet done being flustered.

"From your island," Zara interjected helpfully, her face pleased, expectant.

"My island? Oh! _John_." He got his mind around it. "Nooo, I'm not Johnson," he corrected them. "You're thinking of Johnson, on Sark. Christmas cards."

Granny's face grew intent. Her eyebrow spiked sharply downward at its head. As much as Johnson interested her, someone else _other_ than Johnson apparently interested her even more.

"My son does not bring around his military friends," the mother interjected, and Allen was now able to discern that it was bruised feelings that so colored her tone, the sense she had been locked out of Carter's life.

"Who _are_ you, then?" Granny asked, greedily, her eyes lit like a child ready for a story. Her hands paused over the bowl, mid-bean.

"He's Kommandant's driver," Carter spoke before Allen could, turning back toward the table from where he had been engaged in getting himself coffee. He took a step toward the last open chair of the four.

"Kommandant's - " the old woman stalled out. Her face fell, her expression blanked.

Allen's appetite, any pleasure or relief he had experienced in the last hours, evaporated: water droplets on a scalding griddle. His tongue felt of fire.

Olive Carter noiselessly dropped her dishtowel.

The pupils of Zara Carter's young eyes dilated and shot over toward her father's for explanation.

Carter was taking a long pull on his coffee, insensible to the drama he had incited, but when Zara's eyes snapped to his, he seemed immediately caught up to speed on the horror and confusion his remark (while utterly truthful) had sparked within the women of his family, who knew little if anything of his time away from them; a few sparse - and rather terse - words and two, decade-later Christmas cards from Iain Johnson all they had to hang onto from his time captive and then hiding among the Channel Islands. To meet someone he had known during the war - to have this man, like a codex to their son, grandson, and father in their own kitchen was miraculous to them. To have him, then, outed as being somehow in league with a German Kommandant...

"Undercover, of course," Carter clarified, though he did it without fanfare, stutter or tease of any kind. "He was involved in my escape." He sat down his coffee cup.

The room, as a whole, relaxed, Allen - who had not consciously known he was holding his breath, exhaled with the force of twelve hard years. A knot inside him that had always seemed an untangle-able double proved to be, in that moment, (in Carter's blunt, direct hands) but a slip, and slid smoothly straight as silk against uncallused skin.

_Of course_.

What shocking brevity, what an easy statement. What casual matter-of-factness with which it was both rendered and received.

But such truths were not meant for sharing, no matter how good, how liberating the doing of just that might be. Allen's eyes shot over to Carter's. But Carter's eyes, never exceptionally readable, clearly said, when they met with those of the Kommandant's driver, '_this is my house, my people. If you trust me, you may trust them_.' And Allen recalled with relief that this was a man whose truth _he_ had never known, never fully puzzled out for all these years. The man who had not broken. Brought back to his mind the alikeness to Carter in young Zara's face.

"Do not worry, Kommandant's driver," Granny said, "Olga," she hitched her chin toward Carter's mother, Olive, "and I would not have survived a month at Court had we not known how to keep another's secrets." She smiled, and something fetching bubbled up in her eyes. In that moment, Allen could tell she had not only been a very handsome woman in her day, but that she had been clever enough to know how to use it. To _master_ it.

Immediately he felt more at home, more about himself. He felt half-kin to her.

"Dangerous work," Granny commented, approvingly, "do you have any family?"

"My gran was French," Allen told her. "Not the proper kind, though." He smirked. "She raised us. It was knowin' her language, and her 'dirty' accent, wot got me my place in intelligence work." He let a slip of flirt into his grin at this admission. _Yes, he was definitely getting his feet back with old granny, here. _"I have no family, now - save a sort-of brother unable to stay out of the lock-up."

"A man your age ought to be married," Granny commented, and he saw Zara smirk, enjoying the moment, probably expecting him to squirm.

Carter continued to drink his coffee, perhaps relieved their considerable female focus was not upon him.

"My wife has left me."

"Then you will find another," Granny announced matter-of-factly. She had a way of sighting you down one plane of her nose, sizing you up. "Better than this one who would not stand by you." Her gaze intensified. "There are such women," she assured him. "I know. I stood by mine through a great many - _great_ many - things."

"And you saw to it that he paid you back with interest for every one," Mrs. Carter added archly.

Zara spoke up. "You met Carter when he was escaping?"

Allen felt his eyes skitter back over toward the girl. He had not expected her interest. "There was a Russian girl," one shoulder shrugged. "A prisoner there. She came to me one day to say they had an RAF man they were keeping without treating him as a proper POW."

"She told you she recognized him?" Granny's voice was sharp with the query. "That he was also Russian?"

"He was an American, Mara," Carter's mother chimed in, hitting hard on the word 'American'. "His squad was made up solely of Americans."

Carter quietly interposed himself, without addressing his rebuttal to anyone in particular. "Things could only have been worse had the Germans discovered my Russian connections. They had little enough personal humanity left to render them humane toward others, and if you will recall, Russia had not signed the Geneva Convention. Connection with them would have gained me nothing."

Allen spoke up to add, "I only learnt that it were she - this girl - who had recognized _him_ once the islands were liberated and I was back in London reading his de-brief. It was not the first time she had come to me with information, that not usually about anyone she knew or had history with."

"He is speaking of Anna Lendova."

Allen's head jerked around, back to Carter. "Wot's that?"

"The Baroness Anna Grigorovna Lendova. 'Annie', as you called her."

"Wot? Anya? A _Baroness_?"

Granny shook her head. She was obviously familiar already with some facts of this story. "At her age, it is unlikely she ever had cause to use her title, much less live under it and reap the rewards, much less the respect to which it entitled her."

"She would have lived under the Reds," Carter agreed. "Doubtless why she introduced herself in the familiar. Her family name and title would only have further served to make her a target."

"And she knew you?" Zara asked, unfamiliar with the story or the name.

"She claimed to have known my father," Carter answered her evenly. "It is said we look much alike."

"That is what Babushka says."

Allen had a moment to wonder where Carter's father was, if Zara did not know him, and found himself re-hearing the pilot's earlier words in regard to what happened to another lost, disappeared person from his earlier life; 'The war. _Wars_. The annihilation of an entire class system.'

"What was he like?" Zara asked.

"Carter's dad?" Allen answered her. "How should I know?"

"No," she replied something almost stern coming into her tone. "During the war, when you knew him. What was _he_ like?"

Allen cast a glance over to the man seated next to him. He felt the weight of the expectation of all three women fully upon him. "Very much as he is now, I suppose. He's..._Carter_. That's all. Enough of a non-mystery to be mysterious. And he used to smell fairly more of barnyard than he presently do."

"_Barn_yard?" Granny clucked in surprise.

"I was hidden in plain sight upon a farming tenement, Babushka. Chores of an agricultural nature were a necessary part of the illusion. We could not all," the slightest shadow of humor flirted 'round the edge of his tone, "as did Mr. Dale, gamble and flirt our way through the war in our militarily-assigned task."

It was here that all chatter of Carter and the war was interrupted by the arrival of Ken Armstrong, the inept, twitter-pated mechanic Carter had referenced to him the night before. He was, of course, a young chap. Clean cut. Short years ago he would have been wearing a soldier's uniform. As it was, he was in a plain white t-shirt and cover-alls rolled down to the waist, a baseball cap tight in his hands upon entering the kitchen.

It did not escape Allen's (nor Carter's) notice that the first person he both looked to and greeted was the young Zara.

After his additional 'how do you do's, a chair was found and he was seated to Allen's other side and given a plate of his own from which to eat. As conversation continued all around him, Allen could not help but notice that from time to time Zara's gaze rested in the mechanic's general direction - usually when his head was bowed toward his plate. The former undercover man could not help but think that perhaps, despite Carter's usual, dependable astuteness about things around him, that in his assessment of Zara's total disinterest in the mechanic her father was somewhat in error.

"This list, wot's that about?" Allen asked, bringing them back to topic.

"The lists?" Granny (though he had not been addressing her) took the lead. "During the war as people were displaced, made refugees, herded into camps or disappeared, people began to make lists. Who was last known to be where and the like. Each community has one. White Russian, Red Russian, Poles, so on. The Jews have, perhaps the most. But no single list is complete."

"Nor free, then?"

"True. The list keepers want paying for what is supposed to be their carefully kept information. Time was, many of them would wait at the harbor to add to their lists' information from those landing from Europe." Granny nodded, for a moment lost in the memory. "Standing among aid societies and porters. Waiting to either buy your information, or sell you theirs."

"In the early days they were meticulously hand-copied," Mrs. Olive Carter spoke up from her spot near the sink. Her voice had changed its pitch and lost its familiarity even to her own family. Her mother-in-law was taken aback by this brief speech that revealed her daughter-in-law had not, then, forgotten the days of scrambling for information about her lost-to-the-Bolsheviki husband. A quiet held the room for a moment. "I daresay they are typewritten now."

Carter did not rush to follow up his mother's surprising participation in the conversation, but after a moment added, "I visited a certain such man upon coming home, shared with him what I could of names from the places I had been and the people I had encountered. Such as Anna Lendova."

Allen was all curiosity. "So they know she was at Treeton Camp? And then moved to work for Todt on Jersey?"

"Yes. But someone else may well have since told them more."

His eyes lit up. "So we go and hunt down the man with the list?"

Carter nodded. "Essentially. And then decide what to do with the information, or lack of it such a list might provide. You have monies to do so?"

Allen scoffed. "I've put by enough money to open my own railroad company. Only, until a few months ago I did not realize that I had been saving it by - not wanting to touch it - because it was really for the finding of her all along." He exhaled. "I am ashamed to say it has taken me so long to take up the search."

Carter sat down his now-empty coffee cup.

"And you told them of our Djak?" Allen asked, his mind going full-steam ahead. "She searches all of Europe now for anything that might be left of her people, her family clan."

Carter looked back at him, his face for a moment blank, taken off-guard. He was uncharacteristically uncertain. "No. A Gypsy list? I don't know anything of a Gypsy list."

"But we can get Djak - Seraina - and her brother Djakob on a list. And I could," he brought his fist down in an affirmative thump on the table, "I could quote the names of half or more of Treeton Camp, and fifty or a hundred from Lackland and each of the other camps in turn. List them in my sleep, I swear. Find me the right bloke to dictate to and..." _Lor, it would feel like throwing over baggage to lighten the cargo on what might yet prove a sinking ship._

"_Dva Balalaiki_," Granny spoke up. "It is said to be a Romany restaurant in the city. If it truly is, it is a starting place to help this 'Djak' and her brother Djak."

"Gypsies serving non-Gypsies food?" Allen looked to Carter for confirmation. "Sounds a bit off to me."

"With so much of your culture stripped away," Carter commented quietly, "survival begins to take precedence over folkways. Even over Rom purity laws."

"She saved your grandson's life," Allen piped in, feeling the need to explain his Gypsy friends' importance, "did our Djak."

At this announcement, which the occupants of the room ate up hungrily enough that Allen knew for a fact that Carter had clearly shared nothing of those days with his family, Carter turned to face Allen and replied levelly and with significance, while holding his gaze, "she was not alone in that."

The meal wore on after that, other topics brought up and dismissed with the speed and pace of women talking, until Allen could not help but notice the over-full feeling in his stomach, and realize he could not count the number of helpings he had been served since being seated.

"Stop emptying your plate," Armstrong whispered to him, conspiratorially, "if you're done. As long as you clean it, old Tamara will take it as a sign you want more."

How badly he wanted to belch. Immediately he laid down his fork, the plate in front of him still holding food. Gratefully he noticed Granny gave him no more.

He let a few moments slip by before returning to his business. "And this bloke with the list," he asked Carter, "he'll deal squarely with us?"

"Yes."

"Not bein' funny, but money for names written on paper - names which we cannot be expected to generally recognize, other than the ones for which we search - how can you be sure he'll be honest?"

Carter threw a cold, forbidding glance in the direction of Armstrong before answering. "Seems to be under the impression I'll kill him if he isn't."

_Oh-ho! That was rich stuff_, Allen chortled to himself, watching Carter half at stalking the lad making googly eyes over his daughter. An interaction too rich to be wasted on just one person. Such sights made one long for the gang. _Now, they'd truly appreciate such a moment, such an anecdote_.

He sighed. _The gang_.

* * *

><p><strong>SARK - La Salle's Tenement - Eve of Liberation - 1945 - <strong>He could not hang on very long, in his mind, to where he was. _Probably it was a bedroom_, he told himself. _Probably_. Maybe it even was, as it often seemed, the upper-floor bedroom of La Salle's farmhouse. Then again, it was perhaps a safehouse - undistinguished, one of many - on the French mainland. But if the 'where' was this fluid, this undependable, the 'when' was even more so.

He heard voices - the walls were not so thick - from time to time and the speakers seemed to take little enough care to be quiet. They spoke of food, of meals, of cooking. In response his mind produced a small roster of facts he had memorized: Alderney averaged 2700 prisoners. Prisoners, if they are to work, must be fed. Very well, to menus: half a litre, milkless, sugarless coffee to break their fast. Luncheon: half a litre cabbage water. The evening meal: a second half-litre of cabbage water, and a one kilo loaf of bread to be divided among every six men. Excellent! Just the calories the Reich had scientifically deduced were needed to keep such prisoners working twelve hour days, seven days a week. No waste, his mind said, great want.

Why would he know such things? Why recall them now? Was he being kept on Alderney? In one of the abandoned homes there? Had he raced to that island in the wake of Marion's disappearance as had been his gut intention? Had he then been captured, as Dale had warned he would?

Dale. He thought he saw him, even now, a shadow in the harsh, overpowering backlight of the window's sun. 'You take the word of Vaiser's daughter?' he railed, unable to keep himself from pacing with such outrage that the floorboards, the upper-floor beams did not jostle at his heavy step. 'Or, more likely, you take her money? _His_ money? We all know you do that!' he spat.

"I have been," Dale had answered, calm but clearly impatient with not being trusted, "there is nothing left to see. Whatever proof existed last night, it is disappeared, and most effectively."

Sharply, "And have you not asked?"

"Where I could," he stumbled, trying to reply in all haste, to put to rest any further attack on himself, "of course, of course - but there is a level above which I cannot safely inquire. Not until she is missing longer than a single night, a woman I am not to have any present contact with. It is too much to risk."

"For yourself, you mean. You have _never_ cared for personal risk! Never thought a moment beyond yourself!"

"The gang, then," Allen scrambled, "It is too much to risk to the safety of the gang."

He was a flurry of verbal attack, "If I did not yet have the sense to realize you are one of but a few hopes left to find out what is going on, I should have your traitor's heart cut out by my own knife!" He breathed raggedly but deeply. "If she is dead, there is a body. If there is a body, we shall find it. I go to Alderney, I go to Guernsey. I dredge the Atlantic if I must."

"Ox, I know you're in command," Allen appealed, "I don't dispute that. But you can't risk _everyone_ - you can't risk our jobs here on denial and revenge over your best girl. You just can't."

"My best girl, you arsepot? You collaborating Nazi bootlicker?" And here he wailed, "She was my wife!"

_No, wait_. He could hear Mitch's breathing. Yes, and that step - it could belong to none other than Bonchurch, and his newly irregular gait. It was _not_ that day, then. His clothes did not smell of fire and smoke. His body had not the strength and capacity for violent anger it had then. He was so tired, so worn.

The conversation downstairs resumed again, and he let the words, though his mind hardly comprehended them, wash over him again.

"What will you be happiest to have again?" someone had asked. "Some things we may see again as soon as tomorrow afternoon."

"What, that soon?"

"Guernsey is liberated today. No doubt a ship will be tasked here by tomorrow."

"I know La Salle will say, 'tobacco'. His pipe has become more a prop than a way to smoke."

"No, not tobacco," La Salle smiled, a look of relish upon his face. "Sugar. Sacks and sacks of it. I shall never be without it again."

"Starch," Johnson chimed in. "I've worn naught but wilted shirts for so long my skin won't know what to do with a properly ironed and starched collar and cuff."

At this surprising revelation, Wills looked askance, himself chiming in, his tone one of relish, "the Royal Mail."

"Bonfires," Djak added wistfully, thinking of a time before nighttime displays of light were forbidden - not to mention being afield at such times. Quickly she also added, in a half-tone, "and jewelry."

Allen laughed as he passed by the discussion on his way upstairs. "I shall buy you the first string of pearls I see," he promised her, and ruffled her hair as one might a young boy's, though hers was no longer as severely short as it had been when first she had come to them.

"And you, Allen? What of you?" La Salle called after him.

"Oh, I dunno," Allen turned his head to answer back, now between the walls of the stairwell, "tea, maybe? Proper tea?" he was distracted.

"Tea?" he heard Mitch before he saw him, perpetually seated these last long days, outside the closed door of the bedroom that housed Robin. "That is a weak and un-thought-out answer."

He lightly scoffed through his nose. "You've a better one, I presume?"  
>"A bath, you idiot. A plenty-of-soap, endless hot water, steam that goes down into your lungs <em>bath<em>. We are every man Jack of us filthy to the point of repellence."

"Yeah," Allen hastily and absentmindedly agreed.

Mitch was not taken in by his usual nemesis' acquiescence. His head inclined ever so slightly as he realized this was no mere social visit. "No," he said.

"No, what? I haven't asked anything."

"No, you can't go in."

"Sorry. Needs as must."

"It is one day. The ship will come. He is half mad with starvation and exhaustion. I do not think he even knows entirely where he is." He warned, "He can be of no help to you."

"Must," Allen repeated. "It's Vaiser."

Mitch's posture spiked. "But you are at babysitting him."

"Was."

Outrage. "You have lost him? Robin is in no shape to take on the physical demands of a search!"

Allen let the wounded irritation of his pride and coming-on impatience with Mitch come through in his tone. "No, I did not _lose_ him. But he's found himself a shelter on-island I'll not easily stay undercover and extricate him from."

"No," Mitch said again.

"Yes."

"Abby?"

Allen nodded. "She's never sparked to me. I might get it sorted if I dropped my cover, but..."

"We're not to, at any cost. I know, I know," Mitch fretted.

"He's bloody catnip to her," Allen encouraged.

"I'm not sure he can even stand," Mitch shared of Robin's condition.

"Have John and La Salle mix him up something. Strong as can be. I'll go in, see how much he can understand. We've not much time..." Allen put his hand on the doorknob.

"This is unfair," Mitch wailed, though not to Allen directly. "We are to be rescued! One day more, only one day! Can these barbarians not leave a good man in peace?"

**Abby Rufford's Tenement -** It had been no easy employment to get Robin cognizant and onto his feet. In the first moments of his entry to the room, Robin had barely even opened his eyes, only saying, "arsepot bootlickers," to him, trying to assure him that he did not think him one.

Still, the closer Allen guided him to Rufford's, the more like his old self he became, if a very, very weak and peaky version. Before they were in sight of the house, Allen had to turn back, so as not to be seen.

"Last chore, Ox," he assured Robin. "Matchpoint tomorrow. Ship to arrive." He almost said 'you', but changed the pronoun at the last moment, "We'll rest, then. Promise."

His commanding officer had not responded, but walked up the track to the house steadily, if not with the spring his step had once afforded him when taking on any variety of mischief or risk.

The widow Rufford answered the door. Her delight upon finding him to be her caller was evident.

"Robin!"

"Abby, you can't do this," he wasted no time cutting to the chase. "Where do you have him?" His eyes shot, inquiringly, about the property without and the room within.

She leaned in more closely to him. "Come now," she tried to assure him in low tones, "a woman can make money with such an enterprise." She tried to catch his attention. "Money so valuable she would not even be afraid to share."

"So that is why?" He squinted. It was a very bright day. "You have taken on hiding him for money he has promised you?"

"Better. _Gold_. Which he has, even now, on his person. I have seen it."

Robin cocked an eyebrow, allowing her to go on.

"He has already given me a share. More to come in two days' time." She saw the disapproval begin to bleed across Oxley's face and tried to hold it back. "What does it matter?" She wheedled. "The soldiers will land tomorrow. Let him hide here a day, two days. I will get my gold and His Majesty's soldiers will still get him. It's a ruse, is all. A well-paying trick." She leaned in more closely, as though sharing a lovers' secret. "What harm can there be in it?"

Robin did not immediately pull away from her intimacy. "What harm?" he asked. "What of the people he has gotten this gold from? What of them?"

"And what of my children these past years?" she asked, pulling her face back and away as though he had slapped it. "What of _their_ suffering? Gold might buy them futures. Might buy us all futures - however it came to be his. My oldest only might inherit this land, perhaps my second might help him work it. Once they two have wives and children of their own perhaps I might manage to stay on with them - but what of my others? Where can they live? Must my daughters marry other Sarkese - if only to gain a home and a living? And my other sons - work another man's land their entire lives, never having anything of their own? This is my chance. To provide for them. To at least give them a choice in the leaving or staying here. I'll not get another one."

"No," he said, his mind weary, even, for the rebuttal, but growing in strength the longer he chastized her. "You'll not get another choice, to remember the children and their parents from whom this man took their lives and their livelihoods. Whose gold it is he offers you. Their stolen jewelry. Their teeth. Is this the taint you wish to gift your children? And as for the present harm in it? What if he got free of you? Of where you are hiding him. Got free, then, perhaps, somehow, of the entire island? How, then, would justice ever be served in the names of those children, those parents? You gamble in a dangerous game whose stakes you do not even understand." He scowled, no patience for any other expression. "Now show me to him, and introduce me as the man who will better serve his need to hide on his eventual way to escape."

* * *

><p>"Wot's all this? Neighbors come calling?" the Kommandant cheerily sang out when the widow Rufford and Robin pulled back several hanging rough blankets made of sacking in the barn. He looked a bit ruffled about the edges from his escape and abandonment of his men on Alderney, but in spirit he seemed especially chipper.<p>

"No, no," he agreed easily enough, "Little Mother, let's take our chance with this new fellow. The same arrangement, I assume?" he asked Robin as to acceptable payment.

Robin nodded, allowed himself a moment to muse on Vaiser's future hiding place at La Salle's. "It should do for you nicely," he assured the Kommandant. "Only it has...I must confess," he shrugged, "a rather shitty view." His exhaustion was such, task accomplished, that he could not even smile at his own pun.

* * *

><p><strong>LONDON - The Tripp Club - Members' Overnight Suite - 1955 - <strong>"I had not expected you to arrive bearing me gifts," Robin Oxley quipped to his brother, Mark was at packing his case as he was to leave London the next day. Unlike the old days before the war, he had engaged no valet to assist him with the task.

"No, Old Man," Mark gave as good as he got, had learned a teasing smile to compliment (if not to entirely match) Oxley's, "they are for Madame La Salle. I use you only to courier them to her."

Robin raised a finger in correction. "Madame _Johnson_, you mean."

Mark shook his head, taking a seat upon the bed next to the open case. "Yes, of course. It is difficult to recall the change."

"It is not so recently altered," Robin gently chid him, adding two shirts still in their laundering paper to the case, finding a spot to nestle the brown-paper wrapped geegaws Mark had handed to him. "Perhaps you'd best schedule your own trip before too long. Young Stephen will have forgotten the very look of you."

Mark smiled. He felt it unlikely his biggest fan and cheerleader was apt to do so anytime soon. "I confess," he changed topics, "to some surprise that the Ministry is letting you go. Will Britain be safe without you prowling the globe?" He gave a good-humored scoff, "Will the world?" making light of his brother's mostly-clandestine employment.

"Why should they not?" Robin asked the air above Mark's head. "I have given them, nonstop, the last decades of my life globetrotting about their business, packing at their bidding, ready at a moment's notice, asking few questions. You pointed out only a moment ago I have forgotten certain items of my shaving kit. Do you know, the last times I saw aftershave in use? Once, to have it poured into an unfortunate hole incurred _here_," he illustrated his upper arm, but did not peel back his shirtsleeve to reveal the year-old scar, "and the second, to find it necessary to swab out a gut wound on a colleague? He was no older than you, I should think, and though the antiseptic did its job, _he_ did not last out the week. Myself, I shan't have the stuff about me any longer. And I shan't be bothered to shave again." He did not mention aloud that his wife had always preferred him bearded, did not mention that it was to support a disfigured Johnson's own need to grow a beard that he had first grown his. But he did not leave these facts out because he was becoming any more accustomed to glossing over them, only because Mark knew such trivia already, and rather intimately at that. Robin finished his declaration only a shade less grimly than he had left off. "A leave of indefinite absence is hardly unmerited on my part."

Mark rolled the corner of his lower lip between his teeth as he considered, and asked curiously, "What shall it be like, do you suppose, traveling again as a private citizen?"

"What," Robin asked, "the luxury of non-military aircraft? The lack of smuggling weapons into other countries? Or prisoners out of same? The knowledge that once there I shan't be about my usual," he shared something he had never confessed to Mark, but which the younger man had nonetheless begun to suspect, "horrific interviews with still-bruised survivors? Poring over reams of paperwork hunting for the next clue, the next charge that can be brought against their aggressors? Tracking the dregs of humanity? Dreaming the dreams - as recounted into a tape machine - of the damned? What shall it be like?"

"Rather sounds of a vacation," Mark replied cautiously.

"Rather sounds of an indefinite retirement," said the spy named Oxley. He reached down to touch the corner of silk fabric peeking from one of Mark's now-packed bundles for Madame Johnson. He tapped at it with the tip of one finger. "Rather sounds like finding a life."

* * *

><p><strong>GERMANY - Schlesweig-Holstein Labor Camp - 1944 - <strong>For the most part the guards and matrons kept their distance at night, the barracks and their unpleasant mixture of unwashed, wretched humanity, and packs of vermin combining to make sending in regular patrols and setting watches more than merely unpleasant. If the women prisoners kept within their assigned blocs once dark fell until sun rose, they could be reasonably certain these scant hours might provide them with a tenuous, momentary shred of unchaperoned freedom.

"Tell us another," they had asked the woman, their voices hissing into the sightlessness of complete dark.

"About the giant!" one had called in a stage whisper.

"No, the sailor!"

The voices grew nearer as they convened upon the wood-bedded triple bunk which their favorite storyteller occupied.

"The cocky ladies' man!" begged an older woman with a Bavarian accent.

"One where they kill the Sheriff!" came the smallest voice, that of a child whose existence had to be hidden during daylight hours in order to protect his life.

"Oh, no," disagreed the woman to whom they all had appealed. "No. Jack-the-Lad doesn't kill the Sheriff," she replied, utterly serious in the face of the boy's earnest request. "Not yet, anyway."

A moment of silence fell, as though all listeners took a breath to consider this statement.

"The Gypsy boy-girl," was called out.

"Yes, yes! And the Templar Knight she helped escape," another concurred with the choice.

"Very well, then," the storyteller agreed, her bunk creaking as her visitors settled themselves in for the tale (and the relative warmth of numbers). "Once upon a time that was not so very distant from now, in a land so small and unimportant you will never have heard of it, there lived: an evil Sheriff, his black knight, and a roguish outlaw with a gang merry, mischievous men..."

"His name was Jack-the-Lad," the little boy could not keep from prompting, receiving a chorus of 'hush' from the rapt audience.

The storyteller smiled, a rare-enough expression in this place. "His name was Jack-the-Lad," she agreed, "sworn from a small boy to fight tyranny, evil, and oppression wherever he found it."

"At the risk of his own life," the boy again chimed in.

She nodded. "At the risk of his own life, but never that of others'..."

* * *

><p><strong>SARK - 1955 -<strong> "Though this ground be not consecrated," Johnson assured his former commanding officer regarding Blind La Salle, "he always thought this island entire a holy place, he used to say."

He came the short distance to where the graves of Dick Giddons, and now La Salle had been laid to eternal rest, having heard the dogs announce Oxley's arrival, and knowing that Robin always broke his journey from the harbour to the farmhouse at this spot.

Robin never brought flowers, a remembrance to place upon the plots there. Louise had more than seen to it that there was no need. She had sewn the ground with wildflowers dug up from other spots, and here they had flourished. When one stood upon the small patch, one was calf-deep in them, their explosions of color and variety of shape and scent.

As Johnson had expected, there was Robin, his back to him as he looked to the several markers sticking up from the sea of blooms and buds.

Dick Giddons, the oldest. One cenotaph each for Roger Stoker and Richard Royston, installed after the war - Stoke interred under good English soil by his wife Evelyn back in Britain. Royston left to the sea, the marker here the only to reference him. And La Salle, the patch's newest addition. Yet not so new that the ground had not flattened above his coffin, that the flowers had not similarly overtaken his plot, that his stone was not already coming-on weathered.

It was there Robin stood contemplating his old friend's brief epitaph: '_yet shall he live_' scored into the stone by a master stonemason - not simply a counterfeit one as _he_ had found it expedient to portray now and again during the Occupation.

"He told me once he had never doubted his faith more than in my - in our - situation," Robin offered, though he did not turn around.

His mind hearkened back to that day, at this similar spot, the red agony that had colored his thoughts and at times it seemed, even his vision.

"Sorrow not," Stephen had offered to him, as was his way, to share scripture in times of crisis. "even as others which have no hope." Blind La Salle, wrestling with Robin's grief as much as was Robin, was crying as he watched Robin in a moment of anguish at Dick Giddons' grave, a place he had taken to coming in the absence of Marion having such a resting place for her own.

"No, Stephen," Robin had demanded. "If you err in your belief, then she is naught. If heaven exists, surely she is there, among it. But even you will not now lie, not go back on your own principles, for 'tis written," and now Robin did his own quoting, "in that place there is no marriage, nor giving in marriage."

Stephen did not disagree, his shoulders still shook. He reached out toward Robin.

"You think I mourn for her." Robin accused him. "They all do," he gestured back to the farmhouse, toward the far-off location of the mines. "I do not. I mourn for myself."

"I do not understand," the other man said, trying to.

Robin cast his eyes to what was called the heavens, toward the direction she - and a God he was never less certain might exist - might be located. "_I was not finished with her!_" he shouted, almost demanding, his voice loud and harsh and defiant, but also anguished. There was nothing nearby to use the sound's impact to create an echo, but he and Stephen both felt it, like a bird's call waiting to be answered, vibrating in both their chests.

* * *

><p>"I know it is never easy when you visit us here," John said to his friend. "We are always so glad when you come."<p>

"I am glad you found happiness here, John." Robin turned back and told him, wholly sincere. "On this island. I am glad I am not the only one."

"Come to the house, then," Johnson smiled. "My wife is most-anxious to feed you."

* * *

><p><strong>ALDERNEY - Treeton Camp - 1941 - <strong>"How do you like things here?" Kommandant Vaiser had taken the Lieutenant, an adjutant assigned to the Guernsey civil government, aside. They had just left a meeting discussing the coming deportation off-island of all non-native Islanders, as well as Islanders who had served in the Great War. They did not know one another very well, but Vaiser had determined to change that. Treeton was in need of better management, and he ever had his eyes out and searching for men in need of moulding. Rather, men bendable to his will.

"It seems a very...efficient operation, Herr Kommandant."

"Oh, we are _very _scientific, do not doubt it. At present we have twenty-seven hundred prisoners, working twelve hours a day, seven days a week. We make prodigious advances on all projects."

"Impressive."

"Your English," Vaiser began, "it's very good, eh? Very good for a..._hmmm_ backwoods shopkeeper's son?" His eyebrows flicked up. "Now, why would that be?"

Gisbonnhoffer's back stiffened. It was not his place to respond with annoyance, much less impolitesse to any question of a superior officer's. He cleared his throat, the only vocal sign of irritation allowable. "I had hoped, at one time...university in England. My family had visited there. I studied the language with that in mind; an education."

"And what was wrong with _our_ universities?"

Rather than stumble in explanation, the Lieutenant remained silent.

"Funds fell short, did they? No study abroad for you? No pretty English lasses? No cricket? No tea and bikkies?"

Gisbonnhoffer winced.

Vaiser now cleared his throat. "The _OberAdmiral_ required, of course, officers and men assigned to these islands who could speak the local language. Your talent has come in very handily in your interacting with the local civilian government and the proper steering of such. But I daresay your days among the island bureaucracy ought be numbered. Glory and prestige will not come to those tasked with counting tomatoes and fretting over the transportation of hothouse flowers, but among those commanding the workforce that is strengthening these islands for _der fuhrer_." His eyes glittered. "Do you know how I came by my own accent, Herr Geis? My..." he fluttered his hand, "effortless use of English idiom and slang?" His eyes narrowed. "If I chose I could blend in at Ascot, itself. You have recognized this, yes?"

"_Ja_."

"I learnt it in a prisoner of war camp following Verdun, doing sums and figgers at the urgings of my captors, man. _Years_ of my life hearing the wretched way they spoke, the idiot rhythm and asinine content of their soft, half-empty minds."

Geis' eyes narrowed as he began to comprehend. "And so you now pursue them in your revenge?"

"No! I take my revenge upon them - upon _them all_ - for what they did to the Fatherland, for the humiliation they heaped upon us, made us even think lowly of ourselves. It is for _Deutschland_ I have again gone to war! Spent the interim years preparing myself for war! And we will level your English universities, your quaint, rolling countryside. Beggar," he spat it as though he said, 'bugger', "and despoil your English girls. We will have our revenge for the Great War. And we will have possession of Britain, and their people under our boot to show for it as well." He smiled with his mouth open, breathing through the part in his teeth. "You tell _that_ to your precious rose of English nobility."

Gisbonnhoffer made as though he would protest at the Kommandant's inference regarding his relationship with Marion Nighten, however astute.

"No, no, no." Vaiser waved him off. "Quite right, quite right," he was docile now. "I'm sure she's not like the others. You may even keep her. And her cripple of a father, himself an officer in the Great War, herself born decidedly..._not_ here." The bottom fell out of his voice. "Request a transfer to my command on Alderney," he said, his eyes latching on to Gisbonnhoffer's. "Do, and they may stay as they are. People in my employ do experience certain...powers. Distinct," again, the flutter, "_privileges_ of station. Transfer to assist in the administration of the Treeton Camp and you can poke your leper all you like. You'll hear no more about it from me." His eye glittered, hard and unbreakable as diamond.

It was a power play, of course. He could have requested Gisbonnhoffer be tasked to his employ and have it carry through without a glitch or allowable protest. That, however, would smack of preference, of reward, even. No, make the man think you were holding something over him (though that something mattered little enough to you). Make him see the transparency of your machinations, how you could manipulate and exploit on a whim. Make that man think he owed something to you.

Then, then you might have him for life.

**...TBC...**


	8. Chapter 6C - Final part of Chapter 6

_"I do not know that I had ever expected to hear from the Kommandant's driver again. Nor had I actively expected not to. I existed in a place devoid of expectation on the subject. He had turned up for those surprising days, that week in '54 - some might say like a bad penny - but once he had explained his purpose, I was not unhappy to help him with it. Even, I was pleased to do so. The task was the right one, if somewhat tardily attempted by us both. But that fight no longer seemed like the proper one I was meant to fight. The things that so haunted him were starting to become half-lost nightmares to me, harder to recall once I had waked from that ghastly sleep and broken with the hate and rage that had for so long consumed me and directed so many of my actions._

_Or so I thought._

_It was not a full two years later - there had been no communication between us in the interim - when I received an envelope with an unfamiliar return address out West, even an unfamiliar surname above that address. Inside it held a second envelope which read, simply, "her clothes were sold to a Jersey family in '44. This found among her pockets." Within was a small slip of paper, written over in three different languages, the same words; '_I, Anna Grigorovna Lendova, Russian-born prisoner upon these Channel Islands, once held at the Alderney Treeton Camp for a secretary, then tasked to manual labor with Operation Todt, denounce Island Kommandant Heinrik Vaiser, Todt Work-Gang Oberst Gottleib Weisenschlag, and Herr Lieutenant Geis Gisbonnhoffer and their compatriots for the following crimes against their fellow man; in general and in particular as follows..._'_

[Here a break could be seen in the flow of the notebook entry, writing beginning again in a different ink, Carter's train of thought dropped and clearly re-visited at another, later time]

_I find I cannot bring myself to copy over the full-text of what inhuman and tortuous accusations (every one of them carefully and exactly worded, unimpeachably factual and truthful) that followed. Though the handwriting is necessarily small due to the lack of space (and no telling how she came by the precious paper upon which to write it), I have placed the document in this blahknote's front pocket, still in its original envelope._

_When it arrived at King's Court and I opened it, there was no accompanying letter or explanation. No signature of its sender. Only, as one may see now, a strike-through over certain names in the text made by a different hand, the sweeping 'X' red grease pencil mark heavier, stronger, and of a wider width than the slender strokes of the soft lead used by the note's author. The very sort of cross-off one encounters in the gaming world when executing (and rendering null) a debtor's outstanding marker._

'_Debt paid,' I knew I was meant to understand from this. 'Obligation satisfied.'_

_- _**Thomas Carter, notebook #12, recalling year 1958**

* * *

><p><strong>GUERNSEY - Thornton's Cottage - following Liberation - 1945 - <strong>The days remained warm, but the cottage interior took on, for her, a coldness. A damp she could not shake, that no amount of remaining marmalade or chocolate could fully chase away. She had been alone so long she had begun to wonder at her solitude, knowing that when found out the Islanders would not believe she belonged here. Knowing, in her heart, that she seemed to belong nowhere. That all her life she had only been, at any time, a visitor, a transient. Rootless, connectionless. A German national raised by strangers in France. Sequestered on this odd pocket of formerly-English rule.

_What was she? Where did she fit? _She felt alone, more so than ever before. Felt something of Dr. Frankenstein's outcast creature. Would the townspeople soon be coming for her? Pitchforks, and lanterns ablaze?

She was near the ending of _Middlemarch_ when she first saw the handwriting. Her eyes snapped to it the way an ear used to companionless silence might prick at the sound of an approaching voice. Above the text, written carefully - what? At first she was certain it was a message for her. Instructions, communication - _something_ from her father's driver that had put her here. Her hopes soared. She grabbed for the English dictionary, her spirits dampened only insofar that she realized it would take concentration to sort out the hand-scripted letters, and that her curiosity (and thirst for human contact) might not immediately be satisfied.

"_My Darling_," it began, and though she thought that salutation a bit fancy for the man more used to offhandedly referring to her as 'hen', or 'love', even, 'my girl', her mind accepted it and moved on. "_You must long have thought me dead by now. I confess, I often enough am...wholly dead to myself_."

This struck her as an unexpected line of thought for her father's seemingly un-self-aware driver. But she hungrily read on, having, perhaps, often enough expected a confession of some kind to be rendered by him toward her, laying bare his motives, his allegiances, his true ethos.

"_You will not laugh, I think, to know that I find amongst these pages that I no longer reliably recognize my own hand when presented with it. That reading these last lines of your book is as new to me, as un-remembered as if I had never before read it. That my own notations herein most days are as surprising, as unknown as a novel ending I have not yet reached in my reading_."

It had taken some time for Eleri to translate to that point, and she was becoming ever less sure that this writing was meant for her. Quickly she turned to the (usually) blank leaves at the book's back. She found them covered in small, short phrases.

In the same handwriting she was able to immediately sight the words, '_Germans_', '_Occupation_', '_Marion_' and several others that lead her, without further dictionary-research, to believe she was looking at a crib sheet. A way in which someone might very quickly catch themselves up on what had taken (and was taking) place on the island of Guernsey.

Understanding began to dawn as she turned back to where she had left off in puzzling out the letter prior.

"_I resent my own mind_," she read, "_as though it were a father absent in his child's greatest hour of need; lost at a Spring fair - a carnival bazaar, where night has unexpectedly descended and everything work-a-day and ordinary takes on a look of the bizarre, of the grotesque_."

She read on, the process of sorting out the longhand letters and then translating them tedious but not impossible, realizing that what she had found was not for her at all, but a letter, written over a long stretch of time, from Sir Edward - sometimes himself, and sometimes not - to his wife, Lady Marion's mother, back in England.

He wrote snippets of his days here, of his illness and what it robbed from him. He wrote several anecdotes recalling times past when they were together. But he wrote most, and at the greatest length, of his love for her and his sadness over their separation.

Although the moment ought to have felt to Eleri of a séance, a communication from the dead, it had rather the opposite effect upon her. The cottage's permanent chill began to recede. She read it several times, both the words neatly fitted in-between the lines of text on the novel's last pages, and the more free-flowing words to follow on the un-printed-upon leaves and binding's back cover.

She read and re-read the love letter, to the point of having memorized a great deal of its detail. She knew little if nothing (though she had once slept in her rooms) of Marion's mother, but she could not believe anyone could remained unmoved in the face of such devotion, of such personal, intimately-related feeling.

On a whim, she turned to the front, checking to see if what she recalled was still there. It was. A handsomely embossed stamp relating that this book was from the library of Miranda, Lady Nighten, and naming a residence in a place known as Mayfair.

_Well_, thought Eleri, without thinking further about how such a thing might be accomplished, _that ought to be enough for anyone operating the Island post at present._

She might not know how to find such a person, much less how to acquire the money needed to send such a packet, but she had a very strong suspicion that her father's driver could manage such a thing, were _he_ to take such a task in hand. And if he could do it, then why not her?

Collaborating Channel Islander Dale Allen wasn't the only person in the world able to accomplish something, she told herself sternly. Wasn't the only person who could make and carry out an effective plan, was he?

_Was_ he?

* * *

><p><strong>Hoboken, NEW JERSEY - Spring 1954 -<strong> "Would you fly it, then?" Allen Dale knew he sounded a bit knock-kneed at the prospect of the liquid Atlantic underneath him for the duration of a crossing. "With me?"

The reply was dry, but not unkind. "I find I have little patience for aircraft piloted by another."

Still, Allen remained resolved. "Then I am for Jersey, alone."

Carter nodded. "I agree it is the best place to begin. What might be left to be found will surely be found there."

Allen nodded with a half-grunt. They were speaking like two soldiers at planning a raid. To him, it was a familiar enough mode of communication. "If you discover anything else here, write me care of Johnson. He will always know best where to find me."

"Mmm, _and_ the others?" Carter assumed, correctly, that it was Allen's plan, if needed, to involve the others of the unit.

Allen nodded.

"And you've no need of bankrolling?"

Allen gave a smug look meant to be reassuring. "Surely you recall," he said, "I did _very_ well in the war."

"Reichmarks and script, yes," Carter agreed with hesitance. "One could scarcely forget the 'glorious' tales of your winnings."

"Ah," Allen magnanimously agreed. "But what you were not around to note was that at the end the Navy showed up and the government back home agreed to take on such worthless paper, and converted it back into the accepted coin of the realm." Smug gave way to sly.

A look askance. "I have never heard the like. They _ate_ such a cost?"

"Not an eye batted. The Islands would have been ready for the skip had they not." Allen drew his two hands (one with two fingers cupping a slender, stubby glass) out in the air in front of him, as if setting the tableau, or a newsprint masthead. "Ruined without hope of recovery. Whitehall could not have that. The Channels 'ad been written off once. In the face of what had been visited upon them and in the wake of victory the feeling was that much was owed them. Buying them out of financial disaster was the least His Majesty's government could do."

Light suspicion. "And you - _you_ were allowed to cash in as well?"

"Not like I asked if it were cricket, man. I spent the war taking it on the chin as a civilian collaborator. _As you well know. _Just extended my performance by a few days, popped into Lloyd's on-island and claimed summat of what I was owed. Had it more or less put by since then, as I said. I'll not want anytime soon." Allen's posture showed he was still committed to that act of defiance. "Nor shall she," he followed with a moment later, "when I find her."

Here, Carter turned grim, but as always, remained direct. "You may have to settle for simply finding something _of_ her. Even, only a bloc-mate, or distant relative."

But Allen would not allow a wet-blanket upon his newly mapped-out plan. "I will find what there is to be found."

The conversation broke off as Carter leveled an eye at the Kommandant's driver and studied him unblinkingly, his own throat going somewhat dry in the asking of his next question. "You will return to Alderney?"

Allen met that eye with a gaze of his own that held more than a little weight, but conveyed his own commitment to what he believed ought be done. "Only if it turns out there is no other way."

Both men instinctively swallowed.

"We do know everything, all that might be accounted, of her time there." The unfamiliarity of empathy (never used, never seeming to be called for) crept into the former RAF man's speech. "Perhaps…you will be spared that journey."

Allen now found that he had to look away. He squinted into the distance. "Not sure missions like this are meant to spare one."

"No." Carter, also, found something to concentrate upon in the distance.

"Nor that they should."

"Probably, no."

As Allen brought his sight line back nearer to them, he reverted to a breezier line of chatter. "I shall tell Djak you are happy, shall I? Family man? American dream and all that?"

Carter seemed a bit breathless by the sudden shift. "You may...tell...anyone whatever you like."

"The prince-thing, even?" Nothing could have stopped that Dale family grin. "No more secret, that?"

"Yes," Carter nodded, skeptical, but good-naturedly. "The prince-thing, even." He felt his face taking on some new version of a smile. One he had never known before. One he could only assume was meant for and brought into being by Allen Dale, the way he could exasperate and yet try to charm you in equal parts. He wondered that he had not noticed it before, that Dale's was really a very diverting personality. And a quick-study mind. "Babushka will light a candle for you, you should know," he told the other man. "This night, and probably every night from now on."

"Could have used a few of those last time we tangled in the Channel," Allen ruminated, throwing down the last swallow of the drink they had been at sharing. "Mind yourself, Carter," he advised from out of nowhere, tilting the lip of his empty glass toward his host. "Idiot boys _do_ grow up. And men not born nobility...well, they're not complete rubbish, right?"

For a flash moment Carter felt this new version of the subtle smile he wore intensify, but so many memories of such men tempered his expression into something more complicated. "Much of life has taught me that," he confessed. "For you, I shall do my best to remember it."

* * *

><p><strong>SARK - La Salle family Tenement - 1955 - <strong>Robin Oxley sat in the kitchen, watching out the window that same, same track that led up to the farmhouse, so like it had been a decade ago.

John and Louise were always good to him when he came to visit. As La Salle and Louise had been before, when John had returned post-war to farm as Stephen's hired hand. Good, in that they always let him have some time alone with the house, which in so many ways felt of a home to him. Perhaps not _his_ home, but a home he had shared with others. A space of belonging.

So little of it ever altered. There was a comfort in wandering it for him, a centeredness, even if it no longer housed his men, housed a Gypsy boy in hiding, a man fallen from the sky; sheltered Blind La Salle who had proven himself not a leader so much as a greatly-needed touchstone to the humanity of each of the men who had found themselves stranded here.

Robin had turned the wireless on and the sound of it drifted through and into the kitchen - no longer necessary, of course, to keep its existence secret, no need for a crude crystal set. In fact, once he had mended well-enough, following liberation, he had ordered the best set he could find in London to have delivered to Sark for Stephen, along with the batteries needed to operate it in an un-wired house. It was this very set still in the small sitting room that broadcast while he sat and for the moment kept watch with the past.

"_You keep coming back like a song," _it sang. _"A song that keeps saying, 'Remember'/From out of the past,/Where forgotten things belong,/You keep coming back like a song._" Bing Crosby. Of course Bing Crosby, the man was ubiquitous. International borders could not cage him, not stopper the reach of his voice.

Robin wondered to himself about the lyric. Who was the 'you'? Was it him, did _he_ belong with forgotten things? A made-useless relic? And yet here he was, coming back to places out of the past?

Or was it Marion? Marion who belonged among forgotten dreams, belonged somewhere he could not seem to manage to put her?

Rather, did not wish to put her. She was ever so present to him. Often it did only take a song to bring her to the front of his mind. But then, she had been so intimately connected with songs. With music.

"_Just when I think that I'm set/Just when I learn to forget/I close my eyes, Dear, and there you are."_

As often happened, he dropped for a moment into reverie. Again, La Salle was presiding over this kitchen table. Again, the unit was making use of the farm as their de facto headquarters.

"Robin," La Salle had said with great concern. It had been six months or more since Marion - or what was left of her - had met with disaster. "I speak for the others, but for myself as well. They are worried."

Robin scoffed, his eyes on the roll.

"They fear you will rend yourself in twain."

Had it not been Stephen he would have used stronger language in his disgust. "I should think anyone could see that I already am. My other _half_ torn from me since the night the flyer escaped. With no way to suture the wound left behind." He spoke to deter La Salle from speaking on. "Do not pretend to understand. You at least know where your wife _is_. Free. Cared for. Protected." This, he knew, was a particularly harsh response, but La Salle bore it well.

"There are those who do, though," La Salle attempted to recall to him. "Your father, the Earl," he offered as example. "He lost his wife _and_ infant child."

At the reference Robin's eyes began to harden. As little as he cared for comparisons with his father, he cared even less for this line of memory and thought.

"And," Stephen added, "what's more, he _believes_ he has also lost his only son." La Salle paused in his way, as though gauging the air in the room, its temperature and chemical composition in anticipation of Robin's response.

"No," Robin tried to struggle through the logic, and the unexpected emotion that it brought with it. "No. You do not know him." His eyes, avoiding Stephen's, though the former rector could not see to know it, tried to find something to rest upon. "He's so...cool. So _froid_. Nothing touches him. He just carried on. She died, we lost her and..." He struggled to explain, his voice betraying the unshared grief of decades. "We lost her, and there was no longer any 'we'."

He found he could not avoid La Salle's unseeing and yet immaterial-to-his-instinctive-comprehension eyes.

And though he would not agree aloud, Robin knew within he must concede the point: grief isolated, yet also bonded.

At that moment he had more in common with the Earl than he ever had before.

Later that day, when he had a moment to take Wills aside, he issued an unusually personal order.

"Don't let HQ tell him," Robin had decreed, in reference to the Earl, "if I should die before we again see England. Don't let him know that our deaths were manufactured. He has buried me once. Don't have him go through it again."

* * *

><p>John and Louise had returned to the farmhouse in time for tea.<p>

"When did Dale meet Lana Turner?" Robin asked conversationally.

"Lana Turner? Oh," John asked, confused but then smiling. "The photograph. We keep it up as it's the only one we have of him. Not Lana Turner. His wife. Ex-wife." He shared a significant look with Louise.

"Leave it to him..." Robin trailed off, knowing there was no need to elaborate out-loud about Dale's ways with the fairer sex.

"Aye," John agreed.

"He's re-married," Louise offered.

"What, really?"

"We only just heard last month. Strange, though. When he last visited he mentioned nothing of such a possibility," John shared. "Mind to the task, I suppose. Must've happened quickly."

"And his last visit was..?"

John looked to Louise.

"Six? Seven? Seven months ago."

"Yet he did not stop in to MI6, nor try to contact me." Robin's voice sounded more of suspicion (side effect of his day job) than hurt feelings.

"Didn't come by way of England. Crossed the pond to France, traveled North to see us and then back to Jersey." John shook his head and gave his shoulders a shallow shrug. "Whatever he found there he didn't stop back by."

Robin's brows knit in thought. "And he was looking for information on the Russian secretary?"

"He spoke of little else," Louise confirmed.

"Seemed to believe he might find information about her on Jersey. He was with us two nights, here."

"She was tasked to Todt, right? And transferred..."

John nodded. "It makes him nervous, though," he spoke on about Allen and Sark. "Can see it in his eyes. Thinkin' he'll be recognized and caught-out for Kommandant's driver as was. Daresay he can be more jumpy among the Sarkese during peacetime than he ever was during the war."

"It's odd," Robin tried to understand. "That he didn't try to touch base with me. We've rooms of files, entire levels. Might have been able to search something down for him."

"Wot?" John laughed through his words, guessing quite close to the mark about Robin's current work with the Ministry. "You Nazi-hunters? Pushin' yer papers 'til you're ready to pull the trigger? Reckon with Dale's connections he got whatever information His Majesty's files have without you having to dirty your hands for an unsanctioned job, and now he's at sniffing out his own trail."

"Likely a cold one."

"Well," John added, intuiting what Robin could not tell even him about his present-day occupation, "those may yet pay off. As you bloody well know."

* * *

><p>"So you are for America, Robin?" Louise asked as she cleared away the tea things and handed down Johnson's tobacco so that he might pack a smoke.<p>

"I am. I am, indeed."

"And will you try and see Dale?" John asked. "Hunt him down?"

"That last letter you had of him, what was the return address?"

"New Mexico. Albuquerque." Johnson bit down on a grin. "Out with Tom Mix and scores of wild injuns, one supposes."

"Don't know as I am bound _that_ far into the New World," Robin confessed. "I _had_ hoped to meet him in New York," he withdrew a small notebook and copied down the street address on the envelope. "Now I shall arrive friendless there." Without preamble he brought things back to the topic of Dale's search. "Do you suppose he found anything? Even, reconciled within himself to lay the matter to rest?" Robin felt Louise's watchful eyes upon him. In his years of knowing her, he now knew that with her sight she saw just as deeply as had La Salle in his blindness. She would be making her own, confidential connections to why Dale's search for a lost woman might be of such interest to the man now Earl of Huntingdon.

John's demeanor of reply was hopeful, if lacking in specifics. "With his dislike of traveling, we had not expected to see him back with us so shortly anyway. We know only that whatever he found or did not find he has ceased searching and resettled. New country, new wife, new home," the large man's finger came to rest at the closing of Dale's brief letter, "new name."

'_Signed, as is now legally mine by rights to use, 'Alan O'Dell'_' the handwritten letter ended, not even a show of hesitance or uncertainty in the script that formed the new moniker. Just the smooth ease one might expect from a confidence man whose identity had always been more fluid than most.

* * *

><p><strong>USA - Kentucky - Nicholasville, outside Lexington, Horse Capital of the World - The Bertrand Otto Family Stables - 1955 -<strong> The speaker of the inter-barn radio crackled to life. Seemed like every day the operation was depending upon it more; more clients, more horseflesh to breed, to house, to service. More need to locate you faster, seal the deal(s) more quickly.

"_Fred_erick," he heard himself called out by his sister over the PA - the only person in his life who would have dared (even his mother no longer would) use his Christian name on him. "Sending a gentleman out."

Wanting a word with her as he had no recall of expecting anyone, he dodged into the largest of the row of stables to get to the office phone and called back to the main. "Do what?" he asked when she picked up the phone.

"Just arrived, no appointment. Got his card here," his little sister told him. "Don't mess this up, Fred-O. Says here he's an Earl. Talks pretty enough to make a girl's knees turn straight to buttermilk. So's I sent him your way with Jess fer company. She's durn near allergic to that stuff, after all. Like her sister, I don't doubt. No taste for that high class of fellas."

He ignored her overdone, juvenile swipe at his sister-in-law, and by extension, the 'taste' of his wife: namely, himself. Sisters and brothers, after all, made a lifetime of such gibes.

"An Earl?" he asked for clarification. "How's a feller to call that?"

Through the distance of the line he could hear her make a sound of musing. "Reckon it's 'milord' this or 'milord' that. Lessen you'd rather not send great-grandpappy Alastair Bertrand spinning in his grave over all that trouble and all that blood shed to keep y'all from havin' to speak that-a way."

"Zat right? And what would you do, honey?"

"The way he talks? Better I not answer as it may well incriminate me," she replied, and he could imagine the curl of deviltry about her lips as she said it.

"Get your salts, then," he teased her back dryly. "Should be arrivin' back here any moment now."

* * *

><p>Robin Oxley had driven himself around the winding turnings and narrow, black wooden fence-lined lanes to find the place. The car he had bought in Cincinnati, shortly after he disembarked his plane. His time in New York City had not required personal transportation. He had used public transport, the occasional cab to get around that metropolis. The quick checks he had done there, in-between sightseeing, had confirmed what Kirk Leaves' steward had already discovered: the name and whereabouts of the man who had...he did not know the proper word...inherited? the keeping of, if not the outright possession of, Saracen's Beau.<p>

The car's front seat was strewn with maps to this unknown-to-him section of this larger (also unknown-to-him) country. It was so outsized in scale, so many places, states and people. Had he not paid closer attention in school? If England had a long and glorious (and oft-times confusing to an outsider) history, then the States surely had the upper hand by far when it came to the amount of sheer geography, the challenge of land mass. How did one manage to keep it all straight? And him not yet even a third of the way in-country.

He followed a sign to a gravel lot near what seemed an administrative building, though it was unassuming enough to seem as though it was embarrassed to have such a vital task thrust upon it.

Attached to the eaves of it was a loudspeaker, reminding him somewhat of those present at military installations, out of which disembodied voices would boom from time to time, barking orders and information.

Just before he was close enough to put his hand to the building's door knob and step inside, this one did just that. There was a loud and unexpected zing as it came to life broadcasting a disembodied voice, and then he felt the ground about him fall away, his eyes threaten to roll straight back into his head and lay him out upon the small gravel and dirt of the open car park.

He fought against it. Found, within himself an equal desire to embrace the sound, that familiar voice so inconsistent to find _here_ (though this was clearly its natural habitat) and not upon those tiny specs floating in the Channel.

* * *

><p><em>"News and more news, and a full recap of BBC broadcasted news from earlier today coming up," Marion had said into a microphone. The voice she used was not her own. He did not recognize it, but its genesis at present interested him far less than the long-absent-from-his-life lips employing it.<em>

_Robin pulled in his chin, what he was hearing entirely unexpected. "So you are not _listening_ at all. You are...transmitting..." His head remained slightly tilted to one side, his eyes ever on hers._

_She gave no answer where he had left space for one. Her hand, once so welcoming to him, still lay in plain view on the pistol. "Spying and following people is now, you say, in your nature?" she asked him, archly. "Is it also in your nature to crash parties of powerful and dangerous men, your sworn enemies?"_

* * *

><p>"Cropper," the Voice of the Nightwatch now called through the eaves' speaker to some workman, "get y'all's lazy backside to stable six. Kelly's Gavotte's thrown her second shoe of the week."<p>

_Well, slap the dog and spit in the fire,_ Robin quite the vital content he was used to hearing from it.

A shadow fell across his path, and when he recognized it for another person, he reached out toward them and asked. "Please, who is speaking? Whose voice?"

Though the man he had entreated did not know him, still he smiled congenially and waved his hand toward the door of the office. "That's Josie. Inside. You'll find her there."

Robin stumbled (at least it seemed to him he stumbled) through the door, finding a desk manned by a young woman with a pleasing face that seemed to show she had known little of life other than happiness, and well-used dimples to show that she was well-practiced at sharing it with others.

"Hey," she said as he approached her. He was just getting used to the idea that this was, in fact, some sort of regional pleasantry that could also stand for a greeting.

Himself, he had not yet managed to conjure a similar 'hey' in return. "Hello, Miss," he began. "You are Josie -?"

"Otto," her eyes sparked at the sound of his voice, her face expectant. "That's me."

* * *

><p>"<em>The lads are quite curious who the American girl on the islands is," he had told her from his place on the trundle below. "Dale, I believe, is most-especially taken with her."<em>

_"Well," Marion responded, shifting upon her mattress, "I shall surely tell Fred's sister Josie the next time I have occasion to speak with her."_

_"Who?" Robin asked, confused by her reply, his brain distracted enough by her proximity in the night._

* * *

><p>"Yes. Yes," Robin spoke the confirmation of the girl's identity to himself more than to her. "Right. Of course, right. <em>Joes<em>."

"Y'all here to see a man about a horse?" She seemed somewhat tickled (though she held it admirably at bay) by his lack of composure upon encountering her.

He extended his card.

Miss Otto took it and looked it over, tapped it twice on the desktop in front of her. She managed to look more of someone planning a spot of mischief than a simple business consultation. "Lemme gitcha to Fred, then. Jess! Jess here'll walk y'all."

* * *

><p>"You lookin' for what?" Jess Queenland asked the stranger she had been tasked to walk out to where her brother-in-law Fred was among the stables. "Stallions? Mares? Breeding or stock?"<p>

"Oh, there's only one horse I am ever interested in," Robin informed her. "Perhaps, even with your...impressive population here you have heard of him? He was something of a champion. Saracen's Beau?"

Miss Queenland stopped for a moment, then briskly set back to walking alongside him. "Beau? Y'all're here about Beau?"

"By Swallow's Den, out of Cordelia Anne," he dutifully recited. "To me, the only horse."

She looked doubtful. "Okay, if that's your business. But...do me a favor. _And _Fred. If my sister...if Bessie shows up while you're still here? _Don't_ bring up Beau to her."

"Not a fan?" he asked, unsurprised to find the horse had his detractors even here, in America.

"Uh, no."

"Misbehave around her, did he? Threw her off and the like? Left her hurt?"

Miss Queenland's eyebrows raised. "Something like that."

"Very well," he promised, "_for you_, Miss Jess, I'll say I'm here to look at...?

"Austrail Aria. Perfectly respectable dam. Bess won't bat an eyelash."

"Done," Robin agreed, feeling that he had again regained his footing following the unexpected meeting with the girl from whom Marion had stolen the Nightwatch's voice. "Perfectly respectable, I am instantly become."

* * *

><p>"Afternoon," Fred offered in greeting as a thin Englishman entered what stood for his office among the barns.<p>

"Yes, good day to you."

Otto had not heard an English accent in such close quarters for some time. In his business it was certainly not unusual to deal with international clientele, but something of this man called to his mind the war, something in the way he stood, the wariness he had mostly cloaked within his eyes, something like a soldier unable to be erased from about his shoulders. _Former officer_, Fred thought. _Current spy_, something else from his own experience suggested. "Fine weather we're havin'," he opened with. "Care to smoke?

"No, I, erm, haven't smoked since the war."

And there it was, the war. Never entirely absent from a meeting among military men, whether it remained unspoken or not. Fred smiled. "Funny," he announced. "And I've only truly committed myself to smoking _since_."

The other man offered him a cursory smile. "I'll not occupy too much of your time, Mr. Otto."

"Fred, please," he encouraged, preferring a congeniality and a gentility in his business transactions far more than the 'business'. "We're a friendly crowd 'round home, Hoss."

"Right, then. Fred. My steward has been making certain enquiries on my behalf of late, and believes he has tracked down the boarding situation of a certain stallion to your care."

"You lookin' to breed or buy?"

The other man's glance swept past a row of trophies on a wall shelf in desperate need of polishing. "I'm looking for Saracen's Beau."

Fred ashed his only-just lit cigarette. "Then I'm sorry you've come all this way."

"Sorry?" Concern grew between the Englishman's brow. "How so? If you are not interested in selling him, I quite understand. I am more of an...enthusiast, rather than a breeder or a show-er. It was not my plan to submit a bid that would remove him from his accustomed way of living, nor from the people he has come to trust as his caretakers. I was interested only in an audience, if you will. A moment to relive those past days of his glory." He stopped and threw a considered glance back to the prizes, dusty from their tenure among the stables. "He had a remarkable rider, if I recall. The only person ever to successfully ride him to the winner's circle, yes?"

"Truer words have never been said," Fred agreed with him. "Marion and Beau were two peas in a pod, one will, split between two bodies."

"The Lady Marion Nighten," the Robin replied, his tone hardening at this man's over-familiarity.

A shrug. "Some folks called her that."

"It was her title, by rights. _All_ people should have addressed her so."

Fred sidestepped what he could see this man felt was his social faux pas. He was still meeting with a potential client, after all. "As for Beau, you have my regrets. He died two weeks ago. It hadn't yet been widely published. His glory days are not recent enough for him to be any longer in the forefront of breeders' minds, and the fact he proved a one-rider animal always made him a hard sell among those looking for a stud. If you have come all this way for him alone, I wish that I _could_ help you. He was a damn nuisance for the full length of his tenure here, but..." He shrugged. "And I have no way of contacting his former rider, either, should that have interested you. Though I wish I could offer that option - and not only to make up for _your_ time and trouble."

"No," answered Robin, commiserating, anticipating what would be said next. "She died in '44, never making it back," he spoke now of Beau, "to him."

A strange expression came over the face of Fred Otto at this statement. An expression that showed that in most things he might take what a man like this earl had to say to him at face value, accepting it as gospel, and so being surprised to find this particular information faulty. "Died? In '44?" he asked, without sadness at Robin's assertion. "Naw, Hoss. Marion's not dead. She's just not -"

Robin Oxley's heart did not stop beating, his lungs did not, as he might have expected them to do, frost over and refuse to compress, fragile as if dipped in liquid nitrogen, depriving him of air. No. Robin Oxley simply waded tediously through the thick stillness of what he thought he had just heard and replied. "Sorry. Afraid I'm still getting my ears around your local dialect. Would you," he cocked his neck as if letting what was left of what he had _thought_ he heard slide out, "say that again?"

**...TBC...**


	9. Chapter 7 - Some Sunny Day

**SARK - La Salle's Tenement – Guernsey is liberated, Sark waits – early evening, 8 May 1945 – **"It is my affliction, then, is it?" He broke the word 'affliction' into three crisp syllables, heavy emphasis on the middle one, "That makes you suddenly distrust me so? Need. I. remind you-"

"That you are in _de facto_ command, here, Mitch?" Allen held back an inopportune oncoming roll of the eyes. "How well _I_-how well we _all_-know it..." In its place, he let his eyes slide over toward where Johnson had positioned himself against the opposite, though rather near, wall of La Salle's upper floor passageway, outside the room that held the man they were arguing over. Unsurprisingly, Johnson did not agree with Allen's sniping aloud, though doubtless he seconded Allen's assertion.

"Look, Mitchy," Allen pleaded, changing his tack. "_Sir_-were you tasked with ferrying Ox across a far and distant desert, him half-dead and needing returned home from right-bloody Crusade, I would not doubt for one instant that you could do it, absent _two_ good legs—" Allen's grandiose illustration threatened to continue on, "were you—"

But now Johnson chose to cut him short. He let out a rumble. "Not a soul here doubts you can get him to the boat, and on to the care he best needs."

"It's only you've got another task wot needs seein' to," Allen finished the thought with a swell of relief and an expulsion of breath.

Mitch attempted rather unsuccessfully to hold back a huff. "And _what_ could be more important in the coming hours than Robin's rescue and medical need?"

Allen's muscles felt sprung simply by invoking the boiling-under-the-surface exuberance of the island from which he had only so shortly come away. "Guernsey is presently thick with gossip and speculation about the landing and tomorrow morning's impending surrender. Too many times the word came to me that Sir Edward's son has shipped from England; 'Clem, wot is now Lord Nighten', all said; set to be civil-military liaison for the present duration." It was a spot of gossip too prevalent and consistent to dismiss.

"D'ye suppose Stoke's back, too?" John uncharacteristically interrupted, having missed his comrades. "Royston, even?"

Despite his own moderate curiosity about same, Allen steered back toward the topic of nearest necessity. "If Nighten presents himself, Mitch has a double obligation—treble, even." Here, though he could not have said why, he lowered his voice. "First, to check-in for the unit; second, to report on the Nighten family. And third—"

Here, Mitch continued for him, speaking of Eva's son Seth. "To report on the…_further_…Nighten family."

"Ex-actly," Allen agreed heartily, thinking the wind was finally beginning to prevail in his direction. "And you cannot be in two places at once."

"Nor is it a job for any other among us," John added, in addition to Bonchurch's rank, recalling Mitch's acquaintance with the Nighten family pre-war.

"No. It is not," Mitch agreed, speaking as though it were now settled. "You are very right."

"It is wot Robin would do, were he able," Allen offered, knowing what discomfort and grief, even, there would be in this task. "It is what he would order one of us to do as he is not." But knowing also, that with the news of death—father and sister—there was also news of life, and none better equipped to share with Clem Nighten news of his unexpected son Seth than Mitch.

"True," John agreed. "It is what Robin would command."

"That, and for Wills to babysit the Kommandant," Mitch agreed.

"There will not be much movement, there, since we lowered the doorway, blocking any exit 'til he may be digged out," Allen reminded.

"Aye," John agreed. "We took away, even, his shitty view."

Allen sniggered, "by the addition of more shit." He shot an antsy glance toward Mitch as he always did when the Kommandant was referenced, they two having more experience with the man than any of the others.

"Yes, he may well know himself duped by now," Mitch commiserated, forgetting himself for a moment and unconsciously gripping his bad leg.

John glossed over further discussion of the Nazi they had tricked into 'hiding' within Reddy's 'shit shack' hidey-hole until he might be handed over to His Majesty's military, instead re-addressing the subject of their squabble. "Were it not for the need to identify Robin as being with the unit as soon as can be, I'd send _Djak_ to see him to the ship. She's up for it, certainly. La Salle could ride along and direct her easily enough to the harbour."

"Naw," Allen dissented, resolved in what must be done. "It's best I go."

"You must take care," Mitch admonished, his voice ascending up the scale. "_Utmost_ care. And make certain they know who they're caring for. You must be certain they understand."

Allen gave a laugh more nervy than he was comfortable with, but regained his balance by the time he spoke. "'Course I will, Mitch."

"And you _must_," and here Mitch paused, knowing even in his own frequently over-positive heart he might well be asking too much. "You must see to it that he walks onto the ship himself." His eyes leveled at Allen. "No stretchers. No one carrying him."

"Perhaps…he might lean upon you," John suggested, but his eyes skittishly avoided Mitch's, which burned too brightly in the darkening space between the three with a near-rabid intensity for his ailing friend.

"If he must," Mitch rejoined, prophesying. "But I tell you, Allen Dale—if he does not walk onto that ship under his own power, he will never rise from his bed again."

"And we cannae have that," Johnson reluctantly agreed, putting an end to planning their strategy for the next morning, and the long, years overdue arrival of the liberating Royal Navy.

* * *

><p><strong>USA - Kentucky - Bertrand Otto Family Stables - 1955 <strong>- The barn-located office of Fred Otto sat close—too close-all about him. He felt the imagined press of it against him, against his personal space. Robert Oxley's eyes contracted and began to show him the innumerable dust motes swirling in the air about the other man who had, perhaps, just given voice to the impossible. Who, at the very least, was about to confirm that he had either spoken erroneously, or had been so heard by Oxley's ears.

The old hay allergy once diagnosed by Iain Johnson upon La Salle's multi-purposed trestle table threatened to water Robin's eyes and distract him with a sneeze, but he did not let his expectant, though wary, stare waver from Otto's very mouth.

"Beg pardon," that mouth said, the teeth not showing enough to form into a friendly smile, the lips instead pulled in a way not dissimilar to the horseman's lower lids; growing thinner and guarded. "What'd y'all say your name was again?"

"I am Huntingdon," Robin said, something about the other man's sudden retreat into the cloak of caution bringing out the undercover operative within him. _Huntingdon, Earl of_ was, after all, the name on the card he had left at the administration desk with Miss Josie Otto. Telepathically he willed this man to continue uninterrupted, to carry on responding to his desperate need of an answer to the question of Marion.

Fred Otto, sitting at his own desk, upon his own land, within his own country, rather than rushing to put the matter to rest, came forward in his chair incrementally. "Why not your Christian name," he requested of this stranger, though without the additional pleasantries and casual familiarities every other moment of his speech seemed to hold in abundance. "Y'all have mine, after all."

Robin, seeing he would not likely get his answer any other way, and having, with blooming internal panic, realized in the passing seconds that he had no reason in this situation to behave as though he were mid-interrogation for Her Majesty, answered, breaking his stare at the other man only briefly. "Very well," he agreed to Otto's perfectly reasonable request, "Robin, Robin Oxley. Earl of Huntingdon."

Four heartbeats passed.

Otto made no attempt to hide his immediate recognition of the name. He leaned further toward the desktop separating them. "You, sir," he told Robin, joining in the stare, "are dead." His eyes tried to settle upon a tell in this man, examining Oxley's expression. Unable to find one, he leaned back into his chair, almost casually as he cataloged his actions those years ago. "Read the telegram myself. Chased the spectre of your ghost to what there was to be found of British soil in New York City, bribed a shady ole rum runner to get to your funeral-"

Robin did not bother to waste breath or time sharing aloud that men of his occupation died and rose again at the will of their government. He cared nothing for speaking on himself. He cared nothing for hearing what this Kentucky country squire had or had not ever done. His hands had become perfectly still, effortlessly composed, though no other part of himself could make a similar claim. "Marion is alive?" he asked, with the authority of a man clearing every other item off a cluttered desk with an efficient sweep of his arm.

"Yes," Otto half-blurted, as though he could not have kept the news inside himself had he found he needed to do so.

"You have seen her yourself?" Robin demanded, wanting no confusion upon this so-vital a point. He could not help that his eyes had sprung wild at Otto's affirmative, perhaps frighteningly so. Nor help that he had no time to attempt to compose them. "The Lady Marion Nighten," he continued to seek clarification, "formerly of Lincoln Greene, daughter of Sir Edward, Lord Nighten and the Lady Miranda?"

Otto nodded, answering succinctly, seeming to understand the need for haste in his replies. Nervous, possibly, in the presence of such single-minded focus. "I have."

"When?" Oxley's question was no less demanding, but rendered in a sort of rapt whisper, barely any breath at all behind it.

Otto realized Oxley had taken out a small, palm-sized notebook and stub of pencil, ready to record his response. "In '45."

"For—" began the stutter. "Forty-five?" The pencil did not move to record that decade-old date.

Fred nodded, feeling some of the incendiary tension leech from the air. "Well-beyond V-E Day."

"She came _here_?" Robin asked, shaking his head slightly from side-to-side.

"Naw," Otto dismissed.

"Tell me, then," said Robin, his pencil returning to the task, his eyes wide and intent. "Tell me everything."

* * *

><p>"The men," began Fred Otto, with a sort of clearing of his throat which he awkwardly abandoned mid-clearing. "The men had been marching for days, with only occasional stops at villages along the way. HQ wanted us as deeply entrenched in-country as possible in a short space of time." He could hardly recall the last time he had told such a story, much less to a stranger. "Stops at villages were not often pleasant. A body was spit at four times more than shown a kindness to. After all, we weren't liberating the German people—not to their minds. We were conquering them. Us—the races <em>they<em> were meant to dominate; by rights, by Nature—by science.

"Me, I'd managed to score a ride with a higher-up in his Jeep.

The mood among the men was odd—hopeful, as we'd worked and died and slogged so long to be where we were, but still wary of what new complications might pop up to prevent us from seeing home again.

"Mud," even these years later, the thought of it still brought with it a sigh. "There was so much mud in that region that season. And all those Allied feet on the move did nothin' to dry it out. Seen men lose boots—socks, even—to its suction. It got everywhere, there was no containing it. Mind you, I've seen pictures before and since of that part of the world; charming flower gardens, quaint chalets and whatnot, but none of us ever felt like we saw any of that there. Just, brownish mud. Locals that ranged from frightened to defiant. A landscape soggy and bleak. Colors like dirty dishwater.

"But still, in those earliest days it seemed like maybe, maybe celebration might be just around the next corner.

"That day around the next corner was a labor facility we had orders to take over. Schleswig-Holstein, a 'labor' facility. Kinda sounds like the local tire plant, neighborhood rubber band factory, right? We expected a contingent of male workers that we might need to house or control. Old men, men too infirm, rejected by the German military, yet found capable of other assembly work—possibly in munitions.

"Potential munitions stores were the biggest worry on _our_ mind that day, whether to try and see what could be of use to us or devise a plan for detonating them without blowing ourselves and the local population sky-high.

"I'll tell you right now that in the chaos that followed our cutting the wire fencing to get into that 'facility' I did not see, nor discover, hidden weaponry or ammunition of any kind. A handful of teenaged Jerries had been left to give us a hail-of-bullets welcome. Six others were placed deeper in, tasked at destroying the records of the place. Estimates were that they had burned about 80% of their ledgers by the time we found them and put a stop to it. Seventeen total Jerries."

The man Oxley made no move to ask any questions, he merely sat, waiting, his expression intent, sharp and alert, but no longer alarming.

"But where were the workers, these militarily-rejected men, aged and imperfect, who had been laboring here? On first look the camp entire seemed a poorly-constructed ghost town, something meant to fool us into thinking something had actually been going on here. Men were reporting back to me off and on for some thirty minutes that they could find nothing. Two or three other, small fire fights broke out while we managed to subdue the remainder of the seventeen Jerries and distracted us from our search before Wilson—I'll always remember it was Wilson-came streaking across the parade ground, waving his M-16 like he was an injun on a warhorse trying to frighten his opponents merely by brandishing it, shouting. I don't think anyone knew what he was saying. Later on, when I asked him, he claimed he himself did not know.

"What we'd been looking for had been locked into a distant, low building, the side walls so short you might think it was nothing more than a dairy farm's milkhouse. The higher-up and I abandoned the Jeep at that point and beat a path as quick as any of us could to follow Wilson. The men already on-scene were just to the point where they were cutting the padlocks off the main double doors with a set of wire cutters we'd used to get in the front gate."

This part of the story always felt inevitable to him. As though they had all known—had been born knowing—what was within that building, that working to open those doors was merely action needed to confirm it for any doubters.

"I'm tellin' ya, Hoss, people poured out of that building like water over Niagara. They came at us so fast and furiously we none of us quite knew what had hit us, and while our eyes told us it was humanity that was spilling from the open doorway, it took some minutes before we were able to fully take in what we were seeing.

"They were women, maybe five to seven women—ten, even-for every man there, their clothing worn beyond all usefulness, dirty scraps for headscarves. We didn't know at the time they were hiding mostly-bald heads. I was in immediate command of the operation, but I didn't know what to do. I ordered them to be lined up, organized in some way so that we could better take a look at them, at what we had stumbled onto. But it quickly became obvious there was little kindness in such a command. They'd been corralled in that building without light, water, or food for several days—none of them seemed to know for certain. As many as could no longer stand from exhaustion and deprivation could also neither sit, what was left of their dehydrated muscles rebelling against the motion. So they remained grouped in whatever clumps they gravitated toward, and I was led around in and among them with another soldier I tasked with trying to assemble some accurate numbers, and another meant to interpret should the need arise.

"While speaking and counting one small group, something caught my eye. Nearby, under one of the headscarves, I spied a stray shock of black hair. It was not long, nor dressed in any way, only, it was notable as being the only hair any one of them seemed to have that day. In surprise, I looked more closely. The woman stood among another cluster—this one mostly children—though what children of any age were doing at such a place at the time one could not—would rather not—have imagined. Seven or so children stood with her, their ages varying from four to, I don't know, thirteen.

"The GI translating tried to draw my attention back, but I'd already begun—I can't say why—to drift toward the woman with the black hair. I got fairly close before she turned her face toward me."

Neither man in the room saw each other now, though each seemed to be looking directly at the other. Otto could see only the moment in the past as he described it. Oxley could see only the desire to look into the other man's mind's-eye.

"Her face was…her expression…it was…cloudy, I suppose I would say. Vague. Like someone longing for sleep or having just roused from it. Her name came out like the word for it had fallen out of my mouth.

Her eyes drifted over toward mine slowly, as though her ears did not quite understand what they had heard.

"She started speaking in German. '_In was fuer einem Lande sind wir, meine Freunde?'_ I had no idea what she had said, and she spoke several other words in that tongue before the fog seemed to lift off her eyes. I said her name again, and for the first time it seemed she truly looked at me."

* * *

><p>There was something about the woman that had once been the Lady Marion Nighten that took longer than she might have expected to wake up. Perhaps it was the lack of food, or of rest and even drinking water for those long days prior to being released from that confining building that slowed her reaction, that gave her the air of a sleeper cycling through several stages of awakening.<p>

She registered a man's face. Friendly. _Kind_, she thought, some tension about his presence lessening. Memorable, she thought—should be memorable. More used to being seen in a less-formal cap, or with what should be combed-back curls falling across his forehead. Combed so just before, cigarette in hand, his fist would push them back into submission. He should smell nicely of barn, she thought—hay and drying tobacco. Oats and leather.

It had been so long since she had heard English spoken. So long since she had, even, thought in English. She spoke to him in the words of a soon-to-be Caesario, finding herself washed aground upon a foreign shore.

Her eyes fluttered, and even as the English words he spoke in a familiar and comforting twang began to unsort and signify in her head she felt a sickening growing within her, realizing that what had finally come to represent reality to her was set momentarily to collide with what _had_ _been_ reality for her, and uncertain beyond words in any of the languages that she could speak that she might be able to survive the impact without in some way fracturing.

Fred.

_Freddy_, like a shallow cry in her head.

Freddy, who did not belong here.

* * *

><p>"What're y'all doing here?' Fred Otto, of the Nicholasville Ottos asked, knowing the last he saw her was to put her on a freighter bound for England and her home.<p>

She didn't answer, but encouraged him greatly by seeming to visibly perk up and more fully take in her surroundings.

"Hellfire, Marion, where's your family? Your parents?"

"Sir Edward is…Sir Edward has died," It took her very long to find and settle upon the English word for death, the German form of it so intimately familiar in this place, never absent long from the tongue, the mind.

"Your mama?" His eyes were wide with the question, the shock of having to ask it.

"No," she said to him, her face animating with what appeared to be a sudden fright. "Promise," she demanded of him, turning unexpectedly desperate. "Promise. Do not tell them. God in heaven, they know _nothing_ of this. Promise me." And she reached for his hand, grabbing at his wrist and unintentionally catching the band of his watch, there.

* * *

><p>Fred Otto looked down toward his desktop, truly seeing it for the first time after long minutes of recounting his story. One of his hands had involuntarily gone toward his open side desk drawer and he realized, without surprise, that he had gripped and crumpled an unlit cigarette in his fingers and fist to the point it had crumbled, spilling tobacco out into the previously tidy space.<p>

"It was then that I saw it," he said aloud, falling silent, the first time his narrating seemingly affecting him so.

"Saw what, please," Oxley asked after several long moments passed, finally prompting him. From experience over the years on the Crown's service with so many other (non-Marion-related) tales, similarly rendered, he did not push, did not demand.

Fred took a deep breath, bringing himself to the point that he could say the words.

"Numbers," Robin intuited, with a heavy breath of his own. "Drawn into her skin." His eyes remained closed slightly too long for a blink, and he inhaled. "There were numbers upon her arm."

"There were." Fred agreed, his voice without color or inflection. "You must understand," he began again, "all around us chaos was only being narrowly contained. Being in command, my attention was required in seven different places. I made her the promise she asked, not to tell her family, and told her to stay as nearby as possible—not to wander away from where I might easily locate her again. And I gave her my second dog tag."

He read the question in the other man's eye—_why give Marion the tag meant for his mouth—meant for identifying him once dead?_ "Should she need to prove to any of my men that she did in fact know me, need to prove who she was. I told the GI translating, and the one taking a roll, that we had a British citizen among us, and rushed to finish all other necessities so that I might get back to her."

He did not have to look to know there were questions in Oxley's eyes: _walk away from Marion, even for a moment, when she had only just been found in such a place?_

"But in twenty minutes or less, I found myself right back near just that cluster, unable to think or command or clear my mind of ten-thousand questions and worries and possibilities. She was still there, among the children.

"She spoke more easily to me this time, no salutations in German. I moved to hug her, to embrace her if only to prove she was, in fact, real.

'Oh, don't,' she warned me, horror in her eyes. 'Don't touch me. I'm filthy.'

* * *

><p>She felt one hand go self-consciously to what remained of her hair beneath her headscarf, the action one of smoothing it when no mirror or brush is about. An action of vanity that here had translated into a talisman of sorts.<p>

The last piece of her left that Robin had touched. The skin he had drawn upon with his fingers, kissed with his mouth now sloughed off, down the drain of an industrial shower, lost in the de-lousing, scarred in places and marked upon by the atrocities here. The divot upon her finger made from their wedding ring only an impression within memory. But what was left of her hair; dead, brittle from malnourishment, still a point of contact, of actual, real contact with Robin.

She looked at Fred. She saw the other prisoners around them. She knew what she must look like to him. How she must smell. How repulsive she must seem.

* * *

><p>"'I know someone in the village,' I told her, a minister, or if she'd rather, I couldn't see the local priest thinking it prudent to offend an American and a Brit and turning us away. I could have him brought in a half-hour, and as the wife of an American officer she'd not lack for anything.<p>

"But she shook her head slowly. 'Can't,' she said, and gave a little shrug.

* * *

><p>"I <em>am<em> married," she told Fred, once the rapid listing of his imminent wedding plans for them had ended.

"Who?" he had understandably wanted to know, "How?"

"A soldier," she replied, any further details of the wartime story of Marion and Robin seeming ridiculous, fanciful—outrageous, even, standing in contrast to the half-demolished labor camp oppressively positioned all about them.

"A Tommy, then?" he asked. "An officer?" He was clearly agitated, rushed, and unlike his usual laid-back demeanor.

She nodded.

"Well, that's something, Sugar," he relaxed slightly. "Could help us get you home faster."

_Home_. That word also sounded of something from a fairy tale, a blissful, domestic novel. "Home?" she asked him, forgetting that he did not know she had been hard pressed to know in what direction to employ that particular term since the war began.

"Well, yes, Marion," his tone was confused, but patient. "We _must_ get you home. Away from here."

"And the others?" she asked. "The children?"

"Repatriated," he told her. "It'll take time, of course, but that's the ultimate directive: all former prisoners returned to their origins, to their families. Things back the way they were. A return to normalcy." As he said this, an uncharacteristic dampness seemed to appear from nowhere onto the high rise of his cheek below the eye.

_Family_. She did not have to look about her to know her fellow prisoners no longer had families, did not have the powerful magic it would surely take to set the world back to the way it had been. She did not say it aloud, but she counted herself well among them.

Another adjutant was coming to seek out Fred, who clearly had not the time to be spending on a single prisoner when so many more were in need of him.

His eyes were dry, now, but with the knowledge that he had again to step away, a frantic desperation descended upon him, and like a man placing the most important wager of his life, he shoved an old leather billfold, tied about to hold it closed with a broken shoelace, into her hands. "Take it," he said, one of his hands weighing it down upon the palm of hers. "Keep it for me. You may need it."

A more formal man would have straightened his back as he prepared to walk away, as though rising from a bow. The same gesture on Fred looked rather more of a lazy stretch, but the darting anxiety was still readable in his eyes. "You're safe now," he told her.

* * *

><p>"'You're safe, now,' I told her," Fred Otto recalled. "And from there I immediately began to re-jigger my priorities, putting her need to the fore. I may as well have found my sister there." He paused. "<em>Hell<em>, my mama." He ran a hand back up over his forehead and through his hair, settling it back into place, though he had not spoken for that long, nor had his hair needed the straightening.

Oxley quickly finished whatever note he was taking and looked up.

Fred had seen in the other man's eyes a determination not to interrupt, a reluctance to insert any questions or other delays.

But it was over, now. They had come to the end.

"From that moment to this," Fred concluded with a wistful finality, "I have never seen her again."

He could see fifteen questions simultaneously present in the other man's countenance, and then be dismissed before Oxley spoke them aloud.

"But how? How can this be?"

Fred shook his head in the same bewilderment he had fallen so deeply into those years ago. "I had the camp and its perimeter searched, enough times that my men began to think me in the throes of a nervous episode. She was gone. And no one there had ever heard of Marion Nighten—none knew a British citizen had been there among them. She was as much a ghost to them as she was to me. I asked, and asked. Those that I _did_ think knew her—whomever she was to them-well, there was no getting past the essential distrust their lot during the war had given to them. My questions must simply have sounded like another soldier's interrogation to their ears."

"But how would she survive on her own?" Oxley demanded to know. "Leaving that camp? In such conditions?"

"I _said_, Hoss," his voice was not defensive, more bemused. The first suggestion of a smile hovered near the edges of his lips. "I gave her my winnings. Every damn penny I had on me."

"Yes, of course," Oxley was unimpressed. "But how far might that have gotten her?"

"I'd been doing pretty well. Bit of a streak." He did not attempt to hide the satisfaction of the memory.

"Very well, how much did you have, then?" Robin was unused to speaking quite so blatantly about money when no solicitors were present.

"Seventy-five."

It took Oxley a moment to untangle the meaning behind the deep drawl, bordering on gibberish to him, that Otto spoke the number in. His eyebrows raised in skeptical question. "Seventy-five American dollars?"

"Seventy-five _hundred_ American dollars."

It was a nearly impossible amount to imagine any soldier in possession of. "But that, that was more than any colonel's yearly salary!"

Otto shrugged, slyly underselling the moment. "Said I'd been on a bit of a streak."

* * *

><p>Throughout Otto's narrative, Robin had been studying not only the man's account, but the man himself. "You love her," he announced, his judgment on the matter decisive, and final. "It's no use to deny it," he assured Fred, "I am very intimately familiar with the symptoms."<p>

Fred did not deny it. His eyes were clear, and perhaps more significantly, dry. "I did, yes."

"And that proposal at the camp, it was not your first one?"

"Shoot, naw."

Robin sighed. This man, and his incredible story had given him such hope, such joy, and yet how jealous he felt of him: Fred Otto, who had _not_ been searching for Marion, who had not known there was any need of finding her; that _he_ would be the instrument of her freedom. There was a disharmony in it for Robin, for the mathematics inherent in it, but he found he could not be angry with it. "Would God you had convinced her to accept you before she had sailed for England."

"C'mon," Otto had been doing his own weighing of this Oxley across from him, gauging his intermittent reactions to his story, though they were guarded, incremental, in the way an espionage man's might be. "How can you wish that?"

"Don't you see? You could have saved her from that day—that place. She would have remained here, safe. Protected."

Fred heard the accusation in Oxley's tone, and knew it was not truly directed at him. "Yes," he gave the nuance of a chuckle without truly laughing. "Marriage to me would have protected her from that day," Fred agreed, "but not from this day. _This_ day, and finding out that she had married one man without having all the facts about another, the truth that you were _not_ dead. The possibility that one day she would come to learn of it. That her life, her choices, were based upon falsehood."

Fred's eye rested on Oxley's right hand, a hand which when its owner had arrived he could have sworn was highly animated, restless, drumming against the chair at one point, and which for long, long moments had sat motionless, composed.

"Perhaps I would have stayed away, then," Robin offered, like a man calling your bet, wanting to see the hand you held. Wondering if you might accept his bluff.

"Naw, you love her," Fred spoke his words back to him. "It's no use to deny it. I, too, am intimately familiar with the symptoms."

* * *

><p>"So you are the Tommy, then, the soldier and officer she married?"<p>

"I am."

"And yet you believe her dead since '44?" It seemed impossible. Marion's own husband unaware all this time.

The fingers of Oxley's hand tapped, each in its own turn, upon the desk between them, like fingers plunking out a scale. "I have had," he said, like a long-overdue confession, "until this day, nearly every reason upon earth and under Heaven to believe that to be true."

* * *

><p>"A hard account to argue with," Fred Otto agreed upon hearing Robin Oxley's story of the final days of Marion's life upon the islands.<p>

"Do you love her still?" Robin asked, without preamble, keenly studying the other man for his answer. Expecting to learn it as much in Otto's body language as in his spoken reply.

"Yes," Otto agreed without needing to pause. "But differently than then." His eyes shot over to some of the trophies decorating the space. "The Derby—the _Kentucky_ Derby," he clarified for this stranger, "It's a two-minute race," he gave a 'little bit of this, little bit of that' hand gesture, "give or take. In that time a life, a fate, is decided. Written."

Robin half-snorted, nearly stomping his foot upon the flooring. "She _would_ like you."

"I didn't understand it that day, that year. But _that_ day, _that_ encounter? That _was_ our life—all the life we would ever share together, our Fate decided. Our story written."

Robin observed the other man.

"I waited until I was certain I loved my wife to marry her. She—and I—deserved that much. And I do love her still, and regret Marion's rebuttal of my proposals not a whit."

Robin's mouth showed equal parts suspicion and acceptance. "But your wife, Mrs. Otto, she hated Saracen's Beau—and his rider."

It was Fred's turn to snort. "Bessie never met Marion—never laid eyes on her save in photographs. But it is a hard thing when the man you love is running all over Europe…"

At this, Robin nodded, finally in accord with Fred Otto, knowing what the other man referenced as though it had come out of his own mouth. "Like molten metal being poured down his back—"

Otto nodded, agreeing. "…like molten metal being poured down his back, trying to find another woman instead of coming straight home to you."

"And so you did search for her."

"Mmmm. Without rest."

And here Robin saw some of the wrinkles and worn spots upon the other man's face. And how, before finding Marion, before that moment of Fate as he called it, those aged signs of stress and mania—of looking for something that was not to be found-might not have yet existed. And he knew his own face bore markings similar.

"A man on fire," Otto continued, "singed by a blaze he has no desire to put out."

"And what did you find?"

"Nothing. Sometimes rumor or gossip that I would convince myself was a shadow cast by her, but looking further into it, it always evaporated."

"And yet," Robin required clarification, "yet you are constant in your belief that she lives? That even now, she lives?"

Otto smiled, the face of a man confident he'd picked a winner. "In promising her that I would not contact her mother and brother—her family-about her situation (a promise I've never yet broken)-I got her to promise that she would keep my dog tag. It's never resurfaced. Had it been found on her, on her body, it would have made its way back to me."

"And so you hope?"

Another smile. Confident, with more than a little swagger to it. "Hope makes the world turn, Oxley. Any gambler'll tell you that. Hope is the master underpinning, the hinge and joint of the breeding and racing of horseflesh. We rear hope like some raise children."

"And that two minutes, that two minutes that might change your fate?"

"I've seen the Wheel turn in less time than that." Fred narrowed his eye, until it was hard to know if he were scrutinizing Oxley, or getting ready to wink. "Daresay ya'll have as well."

* * *

><p>"Tell me everything about your search."<p>

"I had a sketch made. Got that done by the second day she was gone, one of my GIs did it for me, from my description."

"Let me see it."

Fred was wary. "I dunno."

"What, don't you have it?"

"Sure, I got it. Just don't know if you oughta see it. It's not…well, it's how she looked that day. That one day."

"Let me see it."

Fred reached deep into a side desk drawer. "Don't rightly know the last time I took it out. Had it memorized long ago."

* * *

><p><strong>Found among the notebooks of Thomas Carter, within the pages of the one marked 1947<strong>, an old school composition, a theme entitled, "An Important Event", written in the handwriting of a girl grammar school aged, three paragraphs. Upon the back of that paper, written and dated long years later, following Thomas Carter's death, the same author no longer but a girl, revisits and further fleshes out the details and memories of that day:

"It was that time in late summer when the air seems heavy, tired of heat.

I was seven years old the day I first met my father.

We weren't expected to meet his ship, and not invited, either. Olga—I always thought of her as Olga when she was being obstinate—flatly refused to join us, and Babushka's heart was set on the trip. I think she would have engaged a brass band to join us at the end of the gangplank if she could have found one for hire.

With the distance of the years, I see now that Olive stayed home out of fear. Not of the unfamiliar city, nor the array of taxicabs, trains and ferries we had to travel in, but fear that he would not truly be there. It had been more than a year, after all, since he had been released from his service to Britain. Perhaps he had found something there worth staying for, or perhaps he had long ago found something _here_ worth staying away from.

She was always expecting to lose him to something: death, a woman, wanderlust. She was not quiet about her fears.

We arrived at the docks before eating lunch, and I was hungry, which seemed to cut the importance of the day to the rest of my life in half, my seven-year-old stomach growling rather than growing butterflies.

I remember a tall man, to a child's eye, his hair still short as soldiers seemed to wear it, the sun to his back as he stepped along the gangplank, and his head sort of glowed from it, but so brightly I had to look away, though Babushka kept directing me to look at him over what was still a long separating distance.

I do not know what I expected of this man, more a storybook character to me at that time; him piloting a dirigible, perhaps? Him arriving arrayed in medals and ribbons, ceremonial sword polished at his side? Snapping together his heels? Certainly this was how Babushka often spoke of him, her understanding of an Imperial solider, that long-vanished ideal. He did not look like any of those things to me. Other than the fact I was not used to seeing a British uniform in our Hoboken neighborhood, he looked like simply another in a sea of faceless soldiers that were everywhere in those days following the war, when men were not yet returned to their civilian clothes.

When he first saw us I must have been looking away, distracted as a child would be on such an occasion, among the slips and docks of a port, the likes of which they have never-before seen. I can't think of how his face looked, what emotion he might have shown that we were come: happiness, or disapproval and dread.

It was early in the day, and Babushka, after saying her greetings, let him know that she had promised me a trip to the famous Coney Island before we returned home. Promised me on his behalf that my father would take us there.

"No," he had answered, crushing my child's fantasy, his eyes on a level far above my own, scanning the disbursing crowd. "I have already made plans."

And I could tell Babushka was waiting a moment, weighing what to say next, in the way she did in any situation calling for diplomacy. (Which she endured frequently enough with my father's mother.)

"Come along, then," he then said to us, in a tone friendly enough. "I have written ahead and made arrangements at a nearby airfield. I am to buy one of the owner's planes, and plan from there to fly it on to Hoboken. As for amusement, I should think the trip would satisfy Zara and yourself more than well enough." It was the first time I had ever heard him say my name.

It sounded different to me, somehow. I wondered if this was how my mother (of whom I often dreamed) would have said it. I wondered if this was truly, how it ought be said. If I was meant to share this new twist of language: one of ours alone. Later, when he was not looking, I tried to replicate his pronunciation and accent. _Zara_.

We did not go to Coney Island that day, nor for many months after that.

I do not recall that it ever mattered."

* * *

><p>"I had not taken so long in returning to the United States intentionally. Berths were difficult to come by in the early days following my discharge, and the RAF not responsible for my passage (as the USAF would have been, had I flown for them). And then winter came, and I could not bring myself to set foot upon a ship's deck in the cold. There was an uncomfortable itch there of memory, of winter cruises down Russian rivers, the cold beauties of the Gulf of Finland. Had I gone in those temperatures I would have been sailing on a ship of ghosts as my only travel companions, and so I delayed until summer.<p>

When I wired King's Court with my plans, I did not expect Tamara Sergeiovna to travel to where my ship would dock, much less to bring the child with her. At the sight of them there, seeming so small across the distance below me, every step as I descended the gangplank was one for which I felt myself utterly unprepared: a sharpshooter without ammunition, a submarine navigator without radar.

It was not hard to recognize the child, though the photo I carried of her was years old by this time. Impossible to imagine her anyone but herself, even had she not been standing next to her great-grandmother.

It was not that she so greatly resembled myself, nor, even her mother—though it was perhaps that she was very like us both, and so looked of familiarity, of rightness in that it seemed natural that she would be related to me. That she would be the child I would have the challenge of claiming.

But this recognition, whether physical or psychic did nothing to sweep out the thoughts in my mind. Here she was, Zara. At once both the fruit of the great, gaping hole within me—proof of my inability to love her mother, and ever the evidence that I had also been unable to marry Tasha and give legitimacy to this child, but also, Zara: the very thing that had at some point begun to reclaim that dark space within me, to push back against the void located there.

She had no real reaction as I greeted her grandmother and tried to sort how I was supposed to introduce myself to her.

She seemed neither shy of me, nor greatly interested in me either. There was a strange and unsettling moment of my grandmother's making when she encouraged Zara, prompting the child to drop a formal Court curtsey to me and ceremoniously address me by a long-dead title I, myself, only remembered in dreams. The child's Russian, of course, was impeccable, at least in this short burst, but I knew Babushka would have it no other way.

I was greatly relieved some time later to see the child that was my daughter attempt to take a very un-aristocratic swing at a boy on the subway who had thought he might get away with pulling her hair.

…By the time the airplane deal had been brokered, and we were aloft, it was late afternoon. Babushka, exhausted from her day, had fallen asleep behind us. Zara had been quiet, staring out the glass as we flew just below the light cloud cover. She had been throwing occasional (what she thought were covert) looks at me all day, but had never yet spoken directly to me without prompting.

"Carter," she asked, as though she were asking a very grown-up request which she had given very long and particular consideration, "when can you show me how to do this?" - **Thomas Carter, notebook #8, year 1947**

…**TBC**…

* * *

><p><strong>AN:** For those of you just now joining us, it is not usually so long between updates. And thanks for joining us.


	10. Chapter 8-A Letter, A Journey, A Search

**USA - Kentucky - Bertrand Otto Family Stables - 1955 **- Robin had waited while Otto retrieved the sketch he had had made of Marion. "You are Freddy, then," he asked, though of course, by now he knew.

"Yup."

Robin looked at the other man. He was genteel in the way of these people, these men of the American South. His family, and he, were obviously well-monied and connected. He had his own interest in and knowledge of horses, and what amounted to an easy, relaxed humor about him. He was a man who would do well for himself wherever he might be located in the world.

Yes, Marion had been wise at the time to never truly spell out to him what relationship she and this American had fallen into. As it was, meeting this Otto now, with all the day had taught him, he began to feel only commiseration in meeting his unknown rival. "As I know something of the exquisite pain of being in love with Marion I cannot imagine finding myself in a position where she…"

"Did not requite it?" Otto finished his thought, and then surprisingly grinned. "Hoss, she asked me to re-propose the day she got that telegram."

Robin thought again of that possibility, that alternate path. How his own life would have been beggared by her acceptance of such an offer, and yet, Otto could have saved her—from all that she had now endured: the pain, the loss, the horror. Occupation, War, Want.

Otto must have caught the reflection of his thoughts in his eyes.

"It would have been a cold salvation, and short lived," the other man dissented. "Her finding that you had survived. Finding that her life was cornerstoned on settling for less."

"But you," Robin now disagreed, "even in discovering her at Schleswig-Holstein, do not know all she went through once she departed these shores. I daresay even I know not all she endured between '40 and '43."

"And you do not know what fled from her eyes, Oxley, from her gait, from her very spirit the day that telegram arrived."

Robin's face turned bemused. "You speak of her as though she were herself equine: 'gait', 'spirit'."

"I would not disagree with that," said Otto. "Even now, I am reminded of the rare cases we take in here, victims of mistreatment. Of the years it takes them to recover, to feel safe again. To trust. I give their care to Josie, or another of the girls, mostly. They too often associate the presence of men with the abuse they have experienced. Rehabilitation is a slow going on a slow, slow road."

Robin could easily imagine this man undaunted by slowness. The very rate and speed of his speech seemed to last twice the length to which any Englishman was accustomed.

Otto reached toward Robin to hand him over the sketch, asking, "And you don't think she's tried to contact you?"

* * *

><p><em>My dearest, my only Wife, my love. <em>

_My living: Marion –_

**Alive!** You cannot know, though perhaps you might imagine. When you were lost to me—to all of us, I did not laugh for a year. I could stand no companionship but that of our Djak, who held her _rom baro_'s sanity in her hands like a newborn kitten rejected by its mother: something only just born, separated from its only-known means to life, and yet met with the most extreme and punishing cruelty of abandonment.

Perhaps she knew something of my anguish. She pined for the flyer, I was told by the others. At least Wills thought so.

And she pined, rightfully, for her own family, lost to her as surely as you were lost to me.

How long, how very long I have kept myself from writing such a letter to you. Knowing I could never mail it. Fearing that setting pen to paper addressed to you might shred the last wisp of my sanity, the last connection I claimed to this world, and pass my being—my mind-into that murky place between here and the world beyond: fully existing in neither.

But I have seen Otto, now. I know the next chapter of you, the next report. And I shall write a letter every day, and save them for you, until I might hand-deliver them.

I have been deceived, Marion. Purposefully or not, I cannot yet know. Yet how many decisions in life I have made, how many actions I have taken entirely under false information, and based upon erroneous claims.

You must not, you must _never_ think that I did not try to corroborate your death at the hands of Gisbonnhoffer.

If ever I were a madman, it was in those earliest of days following your disappearance. The madness was painful, then, a suit of broken glass I wished to shed by locating you, confirm the worst, or the best. But over time, it grew into a comforting ache, an agony that helped remind me I still lived. And yet even that, on some days, dulled to the point it was dulled. Did I live? A dead man, after all, cannot be killed. And I was now thrice deceased. First, when we parted in London and you sailed, then, at the behest of the government, and then, more finally than before, when Allen arrived to a Sark shrouded in the smoke of a dying Le Moulin to say…to say that nothing would matter to me ever again.

More than a year later, my last duty discharged, the Kommandant installed in what he thought was hiding, but which the unit had conspired to make into a holding cell, I had no strength, no will, any longer to stand. "If you do not lie down now," John told me, his hand about my shoulder the only support as my legs no longer did my bidding, "ye shan't get up again."

"No, I shan't," I agreed, even in my complete exhaustion knowing it was true.

And so I lay down. It was May, 1945.

Marion: I should never have lain down. Not _without_ you. 'Lay down with me and never get up again.' Was this not our vow? How wrong I was to have forgotten it, to have ignored my heart, no matter the obstacles.

I have failed you.

But no more. "Love is not love that alters when it alteration finds, nor bends with the Remover to remove. It is an ever-fixed mark."

And "faster than witches, faster than fairies" I pursue that mark.

It shall be a quest similar to how I have spent the years since the war: in pursuit. I have been a new type of detective for the Crown. Once my body returned to me they began me at conducting interviews with survivors of the Jerry camps. First in London, and then traveling as they needed me elsewhere.

Once SIS recalled what I was perhaps best suited to doing, they gave me command of another unit, which I accepted. Our job was to take the intelligence gathered in those interviews and use it to hunt down the men responsible. The aim was to collect them in such a way that they might receive public justice as the world's courts of law can render. But I tell you, often enough a different, messier Justice frequently found them at our hands—or the hands of other, similar squads before they could be so delivered. It goes without saying that these frequent occasions were hard-won, and not without the spilling of loyal English blood. The spilling of demon Jerry blood, not greatly mourned, save by those higher-ups denied their public spectacle.

So you see, I am practised in the skills I shall have most need of in the coming days. Reconnaissance, travel, and search. And I will not stop to lie down until I find you, and we may do so together. And forever after.

I have with me, now, a sketch of you, drawn from memory the day after Fred Otto liberated you from the hell of that camp.

It is the most precious and most beautiful thing I have ever owned."

* * *

><p><strong>USA - Albuquerque, New Mexico - 1955 - <strong>He had bought a pair of sunglasses. For even in his current, consuming preoccupation, Robin Oxley could not ignore the boring-down of the sun here in the American West.

He had left the car with Fred Otto, its boot now filled with what incidentals Marion had left behind with the Otto family those years ago as she was packed to set sail for England upon those highly doubtful waters of the early days of the war. Every article, now matter how unimportant, so valuable to him now.

Otto had seen him off at the airport, the younger sister Josie, as well, whose connection to Marion had been more than a passing phase, and whose excitement upon his appearance as Marion's husband was both unexpected and oddly heartwarming.

"You oughtta have this," Otto had said before they parted ways, extending his hand not for the shaking of farewell, but with some sort of an old rag in it he clearly expected Robin to take.

Robin accepted, though with skepticism, the dirty cloth, his hand surprisingly registering the weight within it. He sat down his case so that he might part the fraying fabric with his other hand. Lying against the discolored finishing cloth, originally kept in a monogrammed bag within a stable, for a decade now having been placed, untouched, in the cool dark of the Otto family safe, was a ring that the House of Cartier, its makers, would scarcely have recognized, the stones still unpolished, mottled with dust and the neglect of time.

"She _gave_ this to you?" he asked Otto, surprised to see it, to find it here.

Otto nodded. "She left it—though I'd asked for nothing—insisting I keep it to pay for her passage, and for the keeping of Beau."

Robin gave something between a smile and a grimace at the horse's name, again wrapped up in his protracted love affair.

"I've never touched it," Otto said, though its neglect was apparent.

"It is a shame you've never had the enjoyment of it," Robin told Josie, a twinkle for her in his expression, his thumb working to wipe away what dirt it could from the central sapphire. "It is the exact blue of my Marion's eyes."

Josie held back her tears, both for the invocation of Marion's memory, and for the departure of this man they'd not long ago met, but who they had all felt deeply connected to through their lost friend.

"For the life of me," she said, "I can't understand why she kept it wadded up in a tack bag."

Her brother looked at her, as a man might at his younger sister. "Because it was somewhere she thought of as safe. Near the things she loved. She would have used that bag at least once a day."

Robin smiled, knowing it was somewhere that would have reminded her of another ring he had first given her long ago, in a London boarding stable, and never finding Marion's idiosyncrasies anything less than endearing.

"You oughtta also have this," Otto added, breaking the moment. He handed Robin a man's card. "A lawyer in New York City. His firm holds the second key to a safe deposit box we engaged for Marion to store her jewelry in. I didn't trust the captain we found to sail her home not to go through her trunks. So she left what she'd brought with her in a New York bank, expecting that one day she'd return for it. She sailed with the first key. The family still pays the amount due on the box every year."

"Thank you," Robin said, taking the card. "I will ask, though you may attempt to silence me, whether I might reimburse you for such things as her original passage home, the board of Saracen's Beau, and incidentals such as this box? Even…the amount you lost to Marion when you found her. …And you will say?"

"That I have no intention of taking your money for any of those things. If it will help to put your mind to rest, I never sold the ring for sentimental purposes, naturally, but also I was never in need of the money it would have brought. And as for Beau's board?" He scoffed. "His stud fees more than covered the cost of his upkeep. In fact, it might be _me_ who should be making a check out to you…"

Robin waved the offer away. "And so we part as allies?" he asked, falling back into the speech of conflict, of battle.

"Friends," Fred Otto replied, using far less formal language.

Looking at him, Robin had trouble imagining any chap so very laid-back commanding much of anything, let alone relying on the vocabulary of nation building, of the bureaucracy of war.

"Ya'll come back," Josie told him, her eyes threatening to cloud again.

"I shall," Robin promised. "_Marion_ and I shall visit, as soon as can be. Until such a time," now he withdrew his own card, and a pencil with which to write his steward's telephone exchange upon it, "whenever you are in England, you are to ring and stay at Kirk Leaves, my country estate. My steward will see to it that you have full run of the barns—whether I am able to be present, or not."

* * *

><p><strong>USA - Albuquerque, New Mexico - 1955 - <strong>He had disembarked the plane as it arrived here-after several transfers along the way-and descended the roll-away stair with barely a notice of the landscape, his mind to other things, and his eyes blinded by the bright reflection of sun and heat upon everything.

Thankfully, the airport's shops had just what he needed-at least what he needed for the moment. It was as his taxicab traveled through the center of the town to find him lodgings that he came into contact with something else he needed. Stopping at a lengthy red light near a central intersection, the cab sat in front of a television repair shop, several sets playing at once in the display window. At a break in the programme, an advertisement. "Visit O'Dell's," encouraged a disembodied voice, zeroing in on the figure of a well-dressed gent situated between two luxury autos. The voice was meant to be coming from same gent, who went on to promise the best deals in the state, friendly service and handshake promises.

At this, Robin could not help from cracking a smile from where he sat in the backseat of the cab, window rolled down. He placed his hand on the cusp of the lowered window glass, no thought to fingerprints upon it, and let his face come out the window enough to better hear. Not the gent's own voice at all, then, for despite Allen Dale's ability to convince with a well-turned French phrase, and occasionally be understood with a German one, his own lingual talents ceased, there.

As the cab pulled away, and Allen's face came into focus during the advert's closing close-up, Robin made certain to note the street address of the dealership; "O'Dell's Autos". Very well, should the mailing address he carried in his pocket from John's table in Sark prove a dead-end, he now knew where to visit next.

* * *

><p><strong>LONDON – St. Stephens Private Hospital – 1945 – <strong>As the lift operator engaged the engine, Miranda, once Nighten, could not help but reflect back on her tea earlier that week. It was a rare occasion that she entertained younger men for tea, particularly when Clem was not involved. More rare, even, when those young men had not come along with their mothers.

"I mean to marry her," Mitch Bonchurch had declared before she could even offer him a cucumber sandwich. "That is," he self-corrected, "I _have_ married her, by all means legal and spiritual, and by all that implies."

She did not know at the time she would regret her staccato laugh at the surprising immediacy of his impassioned declaration. "And I suppose I know what you wish me to say to that," she had replied.

"What we should _both_ long to hear you say, naturally."

"I do wish you had not begun by telling me news of nuptials."

"Because you would rather not issue censure upon us?" he asked, his tone sincere and anxious with concern. "Surely you have yet _some_ love for Eva. She speaks so warmly and devotedly of you."

Miranda sighed. "Because now you will always worry that I have only given you both my best wishes because of the elevation to which your union has raised her. Had I not known, I could have prayed blessings upon you, without your ever doubting their sincerity. In confessing your union to me you have spoilt that."

A near-smile came upon his face. "And so you approve?"

"I am pleased beyond expression. And not only, Mitch dear, because Eva could have wished no better husband, but also because the child," she found herself shying away from using the boy's name, "needs a good _father_. And it would certainly appear that Lord Nighten may only be that to him by turns." She did not make a full attempt to conceal her sorrow over this development to Bonchurch.

The hospital lift operator called out the floor and pulled aside the grating, allowing her to step out.

She sighed. She was hardly in anything but the position of Chief Hypocrite in trying to encourage Clem's wife Claire to overthrow all convention and publicly acknowledge the child. Claire would be delighted to do so, she informed them one evening following a dinner of roast duck, were That Woman willing to surrender the boy Seth, and allow Clem to raise him in their London home, as exclusively their child.

But of course Eva could not do this. _And why should she?_ She was, and always had been the best of girls. Loyal, sweet, and clever where it counted. Miranda would have reckoned her a fool to abandon her child. The fault of the affair was, of course, doubtless not truly hers. Eva had been little older than a girl at the time, and Miranda had more knowledge than some may have suspected about aristocratic men and their peccadilloes, despite Edward's having none upon his own character.

She was saddened to learn her son counted himself among their kind, but tried to console herself with the possibility that had the war not broken out, the Islands not been Occupied, better arrangements might have been found.

When she and Clem had pleaded with Claire, both in their own turn upon the matter, Claire had shot back at them—in a surprising display of spirit for her—that she'd not have all London talking behind her back of her husband's bastard child and its Nazi's whore and collaborator of a mother.

Poor, usually ineloquent Claire did not have to see their faces to realize how terribly she had overspoken in her fit of outrage. Bastard child notwithstanding (certainly, at least, not in that they were aware of), those very words—that very description-hovered in the air about the family Nighten anymore, from Mayfair to the War Rooms—even so far as Lincoln Greene where the post was slow in coming, and news from the ton rarely with any mind paid to it.

It was understandably wearing upon Claire, of course, gossip that her sister-in-law had taken a Jerry lover, that her father-in-law had recanted his famously heroic position in Nazi publications; and now: that her husband had gotten a child upon not only a former house servant, but that said servant, now mother to Lord Nighten's _only_ son, had consorted and comforted a notorious man among the ranks of the enemy—in the most intimate and unspeakable of ways.

It was all whispers, of course, and most of those with no easy way to corroborate them. But a whisper here, an insinuation there, mixed with a speck of truth, a spot-on suspicion, and…_Voila_.

That the family was tolerated among society at all was consequence almost solely of their ancient and venerated family name, and Clem's unimpeachable work for SIS and Mr. Churchill; their still-strong ties to other, similar families, such as the respected Earl of Huntingdon.

Miranda saw Sir Robert, now, what could be seen of him as he sat in a chair, through the narrow rectangular window in the hospital room's door. She could not see the form of the person over whom he kept so vigilant a watch, but she did not have to in order to know who it was.

Now that she had arrived, she felt less sure of herself. She was not used to attending upon hospitals. Everyone she had ever known ill enough for hospital had been tended-to at home; doctors sent for, proper nurses engaged. Illness a private matter. She wondered if the public nature of his son's condition and treatment made the Earl uncomfortable. If he would rather him somewhere non-military, somewhere private, set apart.

She watched him as he sat. Looked down at the delicate fingertip seams of her gloves and moved her pocketbook to her opposite forearm. The noise, or motion (though either would have only been slight) must have disturbed Sir Robert in his concentration, for he rose and walked toward the door, pulling it open to speak to her.

Before he could even say her name, she—a personage who never bungled protocol—spoke, "I-I have come to see your son…"

At his gesture for her to enter the room, she balked.

"Oh, no. Only to _see_ him. I shan't disturb him."

With the door open she could, now, see the once-known-for-dead Robin Oxley, her nearly-son-in-law. Her Marion's Robin.

Her hands came together, gripping themselves. The fingertip seams strained with the pressure. "Will he recover?" she asked. She had no breath to ask more.

"They say he may do," Robert told her, his voice low and unhurried. "If he wishes it."

"And will he wish it?" she wondered. "After what he has been through?"

"I am told he has seen much," said the Earl, again, slowly, with a considered pace. "Perhaps too much."

He looked at his visitor, took her measure. Understood some of what it had taken for her to come here.

"And will he," her voice rose in pitch, though not intentionally, "will he know about the Jerry Lieutenant?...And about Edward?"

"I daresay he will know a great many things," Robert assured her, calmly, methodically. "The horrible and the valiant."

Her lips closed, tucking in so that she might bite them. "Things of which any parent might best wish to keep their child ever-innocent."

He nodded, casting a glance over his shoulder to his son. "And yet they so often run after the fruit of that tree, and of its knowledge." When he turned back, he had an unaccustomed smile on his face. A smile of reassurance, that he both felt and likewise wished her to feel. "I think now it must be our task to hold them when such truths make them ill. To catch them in such moments. To recall to them—as when they are children they do for us—that for the twelve hours of darkness in a day, there are twelve also of light, during which we might get our strength, and prepare for the darkness to come."

She did not mean to reply so quickly, nor so pointedly. "If you are permitted that, that luxury of holding them, of catching them and recalling the past to them."

"Of course," he assured her, "I was not meaning to speak so lightly of your losses."

She sighed, trying to shed some of the tension she felt. "I did not believe you were, Robert." She smiled for him. "It is not your style. And it is right for you to be happy. To have your son back from the dead. Your life has seen far too little of lightness. I pray that with his strength his spirit, too, will return to him." It had cost her nothing to speak so, and yet she felt stretched thin in the doing of it.

"And for you?"

"I? I may come and look at him from time-to-time, if I might have leave to do so. As for me? I have a son, and a grandson I have yet to meet," she spoke without anticipation, without the true keenness of hope. "There are still plans to be made, meetings and tasks to sketch into a calendar. The current will carry me downstream until I have found my oars again, and regain my desire to steer."

* * *

><p><strong>USA - Albuquerque, New Mexico - 1955 – <strong>The street address Robin had given the cabbie had brought them to what he was led to understand was called a housing development. There was a symmetry here about street and pavement, landscape, and even from house to house. Everything was new to the point one almost imagined an untouched shine still about the window glass.

The homes were low, single story dwellings, and what flora there was was scarce, the New Mexican sun and soil not interested, it would seem, in easily growing either grass or shade.

More than a few homes were still in the process of being finished and ready for moving-in. Another turn, and the cab pulled onto a cul-de-sac where five or so finished, and obviously inhabited, homes sat. At the end of the lane, centered in that cul-de-sac was the house number to which he had asked to be taken.

It was a very different place, this New Mexico, though in his post-War travels and work he had seen a large part of the world, and even some of the American West. His own, present experience with it, though, and his uneasiness about it was further highlighted when the cabbie did not come 'round and open the rear door for him to exit, a habit to which life in London had accustomed him.

As he walked the pavement toward the front door of what was to be Allen Dale's (here, Alan O'Dell's) home, he tried to find his ease with these unfamiliar surroundings. It was a Saturday, around time for luncheon. He could hear music playing in the distance—perhaps in the backyards of one of the nearby homes. It appeared that this home, _Allen's_ he told himself, was built upon a lot two and a half times larger than those about it.

He stopped for just a moment before ringing the bell. He heard the echo of it from the house within. The door opened before him, and he saw a female figure, head turned back to the interior of the home, where she called to her housekeeper, "It's okay, Consuela, I've got it!"

She had a fancy sort of colorful, tropical cocktail in her left hand, her right to the door knob she had just turned to open it upon him. When she turned her head to face and greet him, she did not bother to remove her cat's-eye sunglasses. He took in the modestly sized pearls about her neck, the bright yellow pedal pushers and matching top she wore. The bracelet that slid toward her bare elbow where she had her hand up to hold the festive drink glass.

Bright colors, the jangle of jewelry, a pleasing shape and scent. None of it could have distracted him from the fact he was looking directly into the face of the Kommandant's daughter.

* * *

><p><strong>GUERNSEY – Harbourside Office of British Home Office Civil-Military Liaison to the States; Clem, Lord Nighten – 1945 – <strong>"Name," he barked, to the next in a line of chaps to enter his office. The walls were grey-ish, with un-bleached-by-sun spots in the shape of pictures and maps that had formerly decorated the walls under its prior Jerry tenant.

"Dale, Allen Dale, Sir. Unit 1192?"

"Ah, yes, Goodfell-o—Robin—" he settled on, "Oxley's men."

"That's right, Sir."

He looked up from his desk. "Oh, yes. Information man. What've you got to report, then?"

"Naught to report, Sir."

"Then I do not understand why you are not back at your billet. On Sark, wasn't it? Biding your time 'til you're shipped home for redeployment?"

"The Dixcart, Sir, yes," Allen agreed. "That's it. Only, I wished to ask a favor." If he'd been wearing a hat he'd be wringing it in his hands by now. "Only, there's someone I need to check up on, and I wanted your leave to sneak about the island today for a few hours."

Nighten threw him a look.

"For _an_ hour," Allen corrected.

"And this 'person' you wish to check up on. Female?"

"Yes, Sir."

"And one suppose's she goes by the name 'Vaiser'."

"Sir?"

"And are you aware as to her _other_ name? The name to which she also has claim through her mother? Von—"

He felt it counter to his case in this moment to play dumb. "Bachmeier."

"Yee-es. The daughter of the notorious Kommandant, step-daughter to *_Feldmarschall_ von Bachmeier."

"And in your checking up on her," Nighten's eyebrows rose, "does it fall within your plans to bring her _here_, for questioning and eventual transport off-island?"

Allen balked for a moment as to how to play it. "And if I were to say 'no', Sir? That what she needs is protection?"

"And if I were to point out that she spent the war squatting in _my_ house? With powerful members of the German SS? That she is flesh and bone of the most-wanted man on these islands? And the step-daughter of the aforementioned Bachmeier? What of that, then, Soldier?"

"But Sir, she is a girl, barely more than a foolish child…"

"She is an asset." His reply was clipped, crisp. Inarguable. "_She_ may be a girl, but have _you_ forgotten who you are meant to be while upon these islands?"

"You confuse me, Sir," Allen protested, trying to keep the desire to openly spar with Nighten at bay. "His Majesty is not _usually_ in the business of exploiting non-combatants."

Several beats passed. Nighten seemed to consider, moving a paper from one pile upon his desk to another. Finally, "No," he agreed, though it sounded little enough of an accord. "Not usually."

"See here," Nighten went on, for the first time giving Allen his full attention, and ignoring the papers upon his desk. "You are a slippery man, Dale. Like your brother, I do not doubt." He slapped at a stack of files, that Allen assumed must be the unit's personnel records, wherein he had apprehended knowledge of Tom's plight. "Your slipperiness has served us, and you, well in your time here. But the time for being slippery is past. You are _my_ man now, and slippery is of no interest to me. All it does is get my hands dirty. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Sir. Slippery, dirty hands. Don't be like my bruvva."

Nighten nodded, looking down for a moment and then re-making eye contact without straightening his back or neck. "Ninety-minutes you are granted of shore leave. No more. I want you and your launch returned to Sark and the Dixcart immediately thereafter. And that launch your 'employer' bequeathed you, Dale? The Crown is expecting to take possession of it, after which it will be requisitioned for the immediate moment and eventually returned to its proper owners, whether they chose to resettle upon Alderney or not."

"Aye, Sir."

"And stay out of trouble," he admonished. "And out of town. If you are any good at the intelligence game you will already know that Kommandant Vaiser is to be brought from where he was being held down by way of the shopping street and the square and placed upon a ship bound for France where he will be kept until he may be tried—or whatever His Majesty will decide to do in His dealings with such scum. Keep yourself out of sight. The future of your unit has not yet been decided upon. The maintaining of your cover is still necessitated."

"Right. Lowest of profiles, Sir."

"Go, then." He was already looking away, head down to the work upon his desk.

So went his first meeting with Marion's brother.

* * *

><p>Allen had it worked out quickly enough in his head, the time needed to get to Thornton's and back to the harbour. If he bribed and finagled, he could get a Tommy to take him in a car or on the back of a motorbike as far as Barnsdale, sneak through the woods the rest of the way, probably hitch a similar ride back. This would give him enough time to see the Vaiser spectacle (or at least some of it) set for the public square. He hoped the general populace had managed to collect something rotten in the way of produce, produce being scarce as diamonds over the last years. But this would definitely be just the thing to splurge upon.<p>

He could hear them coming a long way off. The Navy had spared no expense where the guard about Vaiser was concerned. Twenty armed men formed something of a square fencing about him, but they were none too eager to get too close to the man, still in his black SS uniform, but shackled at the wrist and ankles, a chain joining the two sets of manacles and linking them to his waist. No, not too close. He had not accepted a proper bathing since His Majesty's men had collapsed Reddy's shit shack in upon him in order to dig him out. And the lack of hygiene both showed and smelled.

But still, he did not trudge, instead walking with a certain hauteur it seemed surprising a man of his stature would be able to employ. The crowd shouted and cheered, jeering at him in turn, as he was paraded past them on his way to the docks.

Allen nestled himself firmly within the crowd, just another face no one would recall, he assured himself. His own eyes caught out the niece of one of the blokes sent away to a German camp mid-Occupation for supporting G.U.N.S., the Guernsey Underground News Service. Of course she would be here, getting her chance at something of a moment of revenge. Her Uncle had died in the camp, they had been told. For the mere fact of printing a news sheet of non-German approved BBC illegally-gotten bulletins. _Phoebe_, he thought, _that was her name, yes_. She used to help send the lone copy of G.U.N.S. that Sark received. Mitch knew her better than he had…

And there he saw, standing not too far off from her, Mitch. Who, like himself, had no business (and no permission) being here. He thought to go over and stand by him, among the crowd, but caught himself before he did. Bad enough they were both breaking with orders in being here. No need to increase their chances of being caught out by being together.

Vaiser was nearly even with the position Allen had taken up, though several feet of Islanders separated him from the roadway. It was then he saw the flash of something familiar among the crowd across the street. _Yes, he was certain. No, mostly certain_. He had to get a better look.

His eyes went to a nearby lamppost. If he could balance himself on its graduated base, he could raise a head or so above the crowd, assure himself of whether it was or was not Eleri across the street, as his eyes were telling him.

_Foolish girl, coming out to this!_ He could see no way to cross the street to where he had thought he saw her. _The crowd might not hang you, Pet_, he thought—_not with the Navy here_,_ but His Majesty needn't be unnecessarily troubled by your existence._

His just-completed interview with Clem Nighten rang through his head. _Didn't she know, couldn't she see how precarious her position here was?_ Appearing in the same location as her father, as the reviled and surely bound-for-a-hanging-sentence Vaiser, would do nothing to help her cause.

The girl turned, her face showed, it was not Eleri, then. Not here, not taking risks. He relaxed, but a moment from releasing the lamppost and sliding back down among the crowd.

"That man!" he—and every other person present—heard Vaiser screech. "There! He is _my_ man! This man gave aid and comfort to your enemies—in particular to me at every turning!" Then, he repeated, in both French and English. "This man is a traitor to you all! My man! MY MAN," he screamed.

He must have crowed it fifteen times before he had passed by.

Allen, heart beating so as to nearly be audible, had long ago slunk down the lamppost by then, but even among the crowd he felt as much as saw the faces turning toward him, a hardness, a hunger, almost, in their eyes. Kommandant was restrained, guarded. There was little they could do but shout and cheer at his capture. Their eyes showed him that they now saw Kommandant's man—saw that he was not similarly protected, neither guarded nor restrained, nor on his way to imprisonment and trial.

Bare moments before he felt as though they would lunge, have their hands and fists upon him, he managed, even in his state of cold agitation to melt away, no further thought able to be entertained of checking on Eleri. Thought only for action. Thought only of: run.

**…TBC…**


	11. Only a blurb really don't get excited

**LONDON – 1955 – Tripp Club –** It was a terse message, even for an international cablegram:

"_I have my proof STOP She lives STOP Say nothing Not even Eva STOP Letter to follow STOP R FULL STOP_"

Mitch Bonchurch must have read it over and over at least once every ten minutes since Rhu Salaam had brought it to him on a silver tray three hours gone.

He had been set to return back to the island and to Eva this afternoon, finished as he was with his London business and meetings. But now he could not bring himself to move. Yet he hardly felt shackled by staying at the club. He felt lighter, less weighed-down by gravity than he had in as long as he could recall.

He would wait for the letter. No, he would travel on home. The letter would be some time in coming. It could be forwarded to Barnsdale.

It could be weeks in coming.

Weeks.

But weeks of lightness, of being unable to keep from chanting under his breath "_habeaus corpus_" like a dotty solicitor. "You must have the body, you must have the body," said every chug of the engine as he rode the train toward the port and the afternoon mail boat on to Guernsey.

* * *

><p><strong>AN:** I am posting this "teaser" to say that I have not given up 'Don't' by any stretch, but presently real life is very intense and needs much attention. The bits to come in the story require quite a bit of concentration and work to harmonize with the whole of however many tens of thousands pages we are at at present. I am six pages of writing into the next chapter (which usually end up being 20 or more) and have copious notes to transcribe.

It will be worth the wait, I promise. When I can post the completed chapter, this bit will be its beginning, but I'll be removing this note.

Thank you for your patience.


	12. Chapter 9 - Burns

**A/N: **For the record, I can't go back and delete and replace the earlier blurb with this content (if I do so I don't think anyone will be notified of a new chapter update), so it stands as put, and is also repeated here—so skip it or re-read it to get to the new bit after it.

* * *

><p><strong>LONDON – 1955 – Tripp Club –<strong> **Second floor saloon -** It was a terse message, even for an international cablegram:

"_I have my proof STOP She lives STOP Say nothing STOP Not even Eva STOP Letter to follow STOP R FULL STOP_"

Mitch Bonchurch must have read it over and over at least once every ten minutes since Rhu Salaam had brought it to him on a silver tray three hours gone.

He had been set to return back to the island and to Eva this afternoon, finished as he was with his London business and meetings. But now he could not bring himself to move. Yet he hardly felt shackled by staying at the club. He felt lighter, less weighed-down by gravity than he had felt in as long as he could recall.

He would wait here for the letter.

No, he would travel on home.

The letter would be some time in coming. It could be forwarded to Barnsdale.

It could be weeks in coming.

_Weeks._

But weeks of lightness, of being unable to keep from chanting under his breath "_habeaus corpus_" like a dotty solicitor. "You must have the body, you must have the body," said every chug of the engine, every friction of wheel against steel railway as he rode the train toward the port, and the afternoon mail boat on to Guernsey, and home.

* * *

><p><strong>Sark – Shopping Street – September 1945 – <strong>Clem Nighten, "Lord" Knighton if you were an Islander who preferred it that way, had finally found a place to be alone.

_Relatively alone_.

He had found he could not locate any version of solitude at what stood for his office in the four months-gone liberated Guernsey harbor of St. Peter Port. He could not manage to even be alone when it came time for sleep. There was too much to be done. Too many dispatches to read, requisitions to sign off upon, meetings to hold, locals wanting granted interviews.

It was overwhelming. He felt himself a landed knight returned home from long years of Crusade only to find his estate and all amongst it in shambles, crops and finances mismanaged, people abused as though having been trapped under the thumb of a particularly exacting power-hungry steward.

Often, the task ahead felt insurmountable.

Particularly for a man who had come to the Islands with a lone thought in his mind: to find his sister.

It was all he had wanted, to find his sister and to deal with the photo she had sent to him by way of the flier. The photo of who could be no one other than a child of Eva Heindl's. A son.

That the only way he would likely (anytime soon) be allowed to both find his sister and speak with Eva was to travel under the umbrella of His Majesty's liberation force was, to him, acceptable. Receiving his posting here (for which he had heavily politicked) made the task far simpler than being sent off elsewhere—or being re-tasked to London.

So he HQ'd on Guernsey's capital port, unable to find much of Barnsdale acceptable for living-in at present, so ill had the Jerries used it in their final days on-island. He had toured it alone, at his request. It was a trip he would rather not think about, the tremendous holes of absence left by both father and sister only underscored by the devastation and abandonment visible there, at the manor they had come to call home.

With the knowledge that Barnsdale was not to be habitable for some time to come (supplies for repair and rebuilding tasked to more essential island infrastructure), he no longer felt he had anyplace to call his own. Certainly no place to spend what moments of free thought he could manage to steal.

Walking about on Guernsey, where he was known by many on sight, was less an exercise in taking a break from his duties than walking about amongst a sea (and often a queue) of Islanders eager to speak with him on a variety of pressing topics. (And they were pressing, and he did, then, move to schedule such walkabouts to hear their needs.)

But such walks did nothing to afford him a moment's peace. And so it was Sark's Seigneur, Dame Sibyl Hathaway, who had sent him the original invitation to what had become snatched moments of welcome respite. Merely, tea with her on Sark, to discuss some of her concerns and needs. A working occasion.

He had accepted her without reservation. If she did not recall him, he recalled her as being someone his father had held in a degree of esteem.

That first tea had now been several weeks gone. But the visit to Sark had illumined him, and he found himself periodically returning. It still stood much as it always had, its days beginning and ending, enduring very like they had in the past. Its short shopping street barely altered (if at all) with either the introduction of or the retreat of the Germans.

Naturally, he had been to all of the Islands within the early days of his and the Navy's arrival. Even the smallest, designated by the 'hou' on the ends of their names. Lihou, Burhou and the like. All had been visited and catalogued. For him, Alderney had been the hardest to attend upon, though he doubted any of his compatriots knew.

It had, after all, he was told in those early days by Mitch Bonchurch (however briefly as her body had been neither recovered nor located) been the last resting place of Marion.

He had yet to puzzle out why the Germans had consented to bury his father in the ancient Barnsdale family cemetery. Perhaps he would never understand the peculiarity of their action in doing so. There had come to his ears often enough, stories of Jerry...well, if not kindness, at least moments of recognizable humanity. But he could hardly accept them as truth.

_How __could__ he hear such things when the Dead Men of Unit 1192 spoke of Tigs thrown upon a pile of corpses? Her flesh mutilated, her life extinguished? Her spirit, so fierce, forever dampened?_

He sighed, one more in a string of exhales that never much seemed to bring him as much breath and vigor as a man in his position might need.

_What was he doing here? How could he have possibly thought after what the flier had told him that he would find Marion patiently waiting here for rescue?_

Pipe dreams, silly fancies. A young boy's heroic daydreams.

He should never have allowed them to take root.

His father was dead, his sister murdered. All backward. It was the _soldier_ who was meant to be killed, meant to give his life for the cause.

It was Clem Nighten ought to have had a write-up in the _Times_.

Another sigh.

Add to that the surprise and conflicting fact of having found out Robin Goodfellow was here all along. Here, liaising with Marion. And yet, when found, Goodfellow in such a state of medical need that he could not even speak with Clem, his friend, his military superior-not render a single sentence of cogent information.

Nothing to be done but put Oxley onto hospital ship, bound for England, any answers he might have deferred, (hopefully) for another day.

* * *

><p>Something bright as he passed a Sarkese shop window caught his eyes, and he stopped to look at it more intently. He wondered: <em>ought he buy a trinket for Eva?<em>

It was a sticky lot he'd drawn, there. How did one treat one's former lover—now revealed the mother of one's bastard son—when one was no longer in the midst of an affair with her, and when, in fact, within hours of the British Navy landing she had gone and clandestinely wed the heir of Bonchurch? Who, by the very agency one worked for, had been publicized as dead?

Oh, how his head hurt with it all.

_Why not get her something?_ Claire was not present to object to or be hurt by it, and certainly over the years of Occupation Eva and little Seth had had little enough of anything nice.

Unless, of course, her Jerry Kommandant had given it her.

* * *

><p><strong>GUERNSEY – Military Lock-up – Late Spring 1945 – <strong>Clem found he had not been seen as essential, really, in his capacity as civil-military liaison to the on-going interrogation of the Alderney Kommandant. Certainly his superiors (none of which were on-island presently)would have assured him most vigorously that his time and attention would be best spent elsewhere.

But those superiors (even had they suspected why he had lobbied for this posting) were not unduly disposed toward the understanding that in as far as the locating of Marion, in the task of uncovering how she had spent her final hours, his attending upon this interrogation was paramount.

Until he walked into the room where they were keeping this enemy, he had been acquainted with German Island Kommandant Heinrik Vaiser only by photograph. The man's looks had done nothing to particularly distinguish him to the eye; shorter in height, perhaps rounder than some of his colleagues, the black of the SS in his uniform, frequently a sneer about the nose as though he were smelling something unpleasant.

Some might have claimed for him an intensity burning within his eyes, where others would see only a beady affect under a pinched, squinting brow.

The smell of something unpleasant certainly met Clem Nighten at the door, well before he was able to visually confirm Vaiser's identity. He had been warned by one of the soldiers tasked to oversee the Kommandant, but even having been warned, the truth of the matter was still something of a surprise in its sheer repugnancy.

The matter was this: since Vaiser's capture on Sark, where he had been located hiding within an ingeniously rigged manure pile (which had had to be pulled down around his ears to extricate him from the space), he had refused to wash himself. He had undergone several forced "washings" at the hands of soldiers with hoses, but insofar as refusing to bathe himself he was resolute.

His intent was clear: to cause suffering of any kind to those around him. And foully repellent he was, dried manure festering upon his skin, within the cracks and creases of his face where the hosings-down had limited effect.

Finally looking upon the man, one of only several he knew without a doubt had had dealings with his sister leading up to her disappearance and (presumed) murder, Clem marveled that he could identify with anything of humanity about him. Even that he could understand the man's facial features as those of his own species.

Vaiser, though not allowed to have regular or lengthy sleep, proved still sharp enough to zero-in on him, the new man in the room, though he had kept silent and not announced his arrival.

"His Majesty's pearly-pink bollocks!" Vaiser profaned, "another gawper to entertain, and me without any tea!" His voice rose on the final word, into a feminine range. "And no mother to pour!" He tch-tched.

Well used to the Kommandant's histrionics at this point, the other uniforms present didn't flinch, but Clem found both the man's tone and choice of swear grating. He was certain his disgust was visible in his face. "We've a reliable lead on your man Gisbonnhoffer," he worked to keep his tone quite dry, half-disinterested. "Helping us at this point will only aid your own cause, Heinrik." As trained, he used the man's familiar name, denying him his title and status.

"_My_ own cause?" Vaiser replied, in a degree of wonderment. "As long as I remain under your power my 'cause' is, as your Charles Dickens would say, 'as dead as a coffin nail'. But as long as you're here, Darling, waiting for me to sing, I'll certainly oblige, if only to pass the time." And here he struck up a cabaret song of such odious and objectionably perverse lyrics they made even the men present with only a passing knowledge of German blush like radishes.

Growing weary of Vaiser having the charge of the situation, and knowing he had not long with his own packed schedule to remain present, before Vaiser's second assay of the chorus, Clem dismissed all the soldiers present but one to wait beyond the entrance door to the room, and was only then rewarded with Vaiser's silence.

He knew of no smooth way to begin, no slick transition to a new line of questioning. Vaiser's file showed he had been strongly questioned and repeatedly, about the whereabouts of any of his missing staff or contemporaries, as well as about any Islanders who collaborated, and to what degrees, even when not under duress. These questions would continue in varying intensities even when he was sent from the Islands, and likely until his eventual death at the hands of whatever multi-national court that would be designed to adjudicate such things.

Questions about Marion would be unlikely to ever be levied at him, should Clem not find a way to do so now.

"Your case is a hopeless one, yes," he agreed. "But even in hopeless cases it can pay to have powerful allies. Surely, this is to be understood." He stepped forward from the shadows.

Vaiser slowly appraised him, from where he was chained in a seat, but did not respond.

"This Gisbonnhoffer had an affair of sorts—" (he could not bring himself to say 'engagement'), "with a displaced Londoner. The Lady Marion Nighten of—"

Vaiser cut him off before he could finish with 'Barnsdale'. "Why would I know anything of such—-affairs? The man was well beneath my notice. A lieutenant. One among hundreds." He appropriated an air of impatience. "Ask me about days he failed to do his job. _That_ I will remember."

Clem countered. "Yet all Occupation edicts ban Germans from entering into such relationships. Why would this one have been permitted to stand?"

Vaiser appeared bored, dismissive. "You have said yourself she was a displaced Londoner. The Occupation Code prohibited marriage between German soldiers and _Islanders_. Clearly they exploited a technicality."

"But how would she then have escaped being deported with the others not Island-born during the reprisals for Germans made to leave Persia?"

"How, indeed? Mayhap he put her in a pumpkin shell? Bribed a vicar to have her name and date of birth added to an old church register? One woman—" and here Vaiser was heavy with disgust, "even one _British_ woman—is hardly of any import in this great war, is she, _Old Bean_?" His manner was sleazily familiar.

In reply to this outrageous dismissal of Marion, Clem spoke in his own voice at last, separate from the dispassionate interrogator he had trained himself to present as. He had to hold himself back from leaning across the table and into Vaiser's face, looming in an effort to intimidate. After all, there was a report of the man's biting off the tip of an earlier interrogator's nose. "_Every_ person you cockless piss pots oppressed and murdered is of paramount import in this 'great war," he fumed in response, taking a deep, and hopefully settling breath. "You say you know nothing of her?"

"Cockless piss pot?" Vaiser echoed, mimicking Clem's perfect English speech as he re-spoke the nasty insult several times, rolling it around on his tongue. "Oh, that's _nice_ talk from the very man who broke in the whore my cock made such liberal and exacting use of in my time on these Islands."

His face could not be kept from registering the shock that Vaiser clearly knew exactly who he was.

"And where is your icy cool British reserve, now, _Lord_ Nighten?" Vaiser asked, relishing his moment, in full command of the interview despite being the party chained to his chair. "Could you _possibly_ think I did not recognize you on _sight_? Those eyes of your sister's would have given you away had I not done my own homework in knowing who my enemies were these past long years." His voice had descended into a growl. It almost seemed as though, if not shackled, he would throw his feet up to rest on the tabletop in a burst of self-satisfaction. "Why, I have luxuriated in that manor of yours wherein your own photo still hangs, Man. And as for your sister, the _Lay-dee_?" He licked the tips of his thumbs and took his time drawing them across each filthy eyebrow. "Let us say you are not the _only_ Nighten with a taste for peasant pleasures as embodied by the lovely Fraulein Heindl, eh? Why, many is the occasion…" and he proceeded to paint a very vivid word picture of exactly what horror he wished to convey to his enemy.

Clem could not help it, he blanched at both the accusation and the description of what Vaiser claimed to have witnessed and taken part in between his beloved sister and his former mistress.

He knew, of course, that it was rubbish. It did not matter that it was rubbish, knowing Marion for dead somehow heightened the disrespect for her memory, the insult to her character. This man was taunting him, no doubt knowing full-well that Marion's family had almost no reliable information about her life during the Occupation.  
>"In other news," Vaiser went on, a litany of poison that would not end, "I had your father killed—" he crooned. "Just when he was getting better. I burnt your barn, and my spies tell me I had your brother-in-law and comrade-in-arms killed when he had the misfortune to visit this place. <em>And<em> I raped your mother," he wagged his head in exaggerated fashion. "Blah de blah de blah…oh well, one can dream…" Even then, his mouth did not fully close, he breathed through it like a beast yet ready to pounce.

And here was the clutch moment. Either Clem would break down in front of this monster, or marshal himself and all his available wits, and regain the upper hand. A calm, uninvolved tone was the most effective thing to bring to bear, but at best he managed held-back outrage.

"All that vitriol to spill, Kommandant. All that to boast of and not a whisper of anything true about Marion? Nothing of when she disappeared?" He was speaking through his clenched teeth. "Come now, a man in your position—such a thing could not be done without your knowledge. A person such as herself, a person of some import, well-known among both the local and military population…"

Vaiser seemed unfazed by this change in tack, and seemed happy to play along. "Let me see…Yes. I seem to recall she disappeared some time around the capture of the Nightwatch."

"The American girl broadcasting among the islands?" He had read several briefs (very _brief_ ones) on this bit of Resistance since taking over as civil-military liaison.

"No." And here, Vaiser seemed very deliberate to get the facts just right. "_Not_ an American girl. The OberAdmiral's own pet, a former soldier and Count of some repute, who had come to be known in a popular cabaret act for his mimicry and idiot prognostication. Joss Tyr, he was calling himself. _That_ I remember. But your swollen-thighed sister, passed around among the ranks of the lieutenancy like a rusty flask?" He smacked his lips. "Not terribly memorable." He sat back in the chair and went on, as though just now remembering the facts. "Though she did, I'm sure you know, beg any German within a five kilometre radius of her, promising she had valuable information, secrets of the government we could use in formulating our invasion plans. Buuut, we found rather more sporting uses for _those_ loose lips…better served _not_ sinking ships. Though I believe, you know, she did her fair share of that as well…" His smugness was beyond belief.

Again, Clem found he could not master his expressions, could not hold them in check. But he wasted no further time worrying about his face, any tremors in his hands. It was his voice upon which he must retain a firm hand to its rein and bit.

It felt as though the hollow cavern inside him, growing since Marion's loss to the Occupied Channel Islands (dangerously unstable since receiving the news about her disappearance and death,) was about to crumble and cave-in, this man the precipitating factor, his casual vulgarity in the face of Clem's despair. His clever understanding of just how to attack Marion's character in the way that would most hurt, most inflame: first, as sexually indiscriminate and profligate, then as unimportant, and finally, as traitorous to King and Country.

Clem knew it was a test for him to withstand, knew that if he could not endure it (and worse) he would never break the man down and arrive at the truth he needed, not even a kernel of it.

He would not bollocks this up the way he had with the American flier.

One of the soldiers he had sent away stepped through the door and made eye contact with him, a sign he was needed, quite urgently, outside.

Reluctantly, despite all the abuse that had been slung at him, he moved to leave the interrogation room.

Once outside, away from the Kommandant's hearing and vicinity; "Chappie's lookin' for you, Sir," he had been told. "Kommandant's Island driver, what was. Slippin' 'round the Harbourmaster's office, lookin' to have a word with you. You said we was to notify you right away-like should him or any of his ilk turn up."

"Well done, Jenkins," he absently commended the soldier for interrupting his session with Vaiser, though insofar as 'well done', he felt none of the satisfaction within himself such a summation ought to have mustered.

* * *

><p>Such had been his first session speaking to Vaiser, trying to fight past the man's innuendo and braggadocio and actually learn information about Marion.<p>

But their limited (and chiefly hostile) interactions had never been fruitful in the way he had hoped.

The best one could say, in review of his actions toward the man, was that he had not killed him. The worst? That his superiors had been less interested in protecting the physical welfare of their prisoner than in learning what secrets he had to hide, and that in moments between Clem and Vaiser of certain intensity, Clem had discovered frightening, unplumbed depths of potential brutality within himself.

He had finally come to a moment so clear-cut a choice: step beyond it into darkness, or step away from it into something that might one day hold the promise of coming to peace with Marion's loss, that he had done just that: stepped away, and visited the man no more until he was removed off-Island, and taken on to meet his judgment.

* * *

><p>Likewise, on this clear, bright day among the few shops on Sark he vividly recalled his part in the debriefing of the Eagle Squadron flier. In it there was no question he had not asked.<p>

Yet many to which he received unsatisfactory answers, despite the fact that Flight Commander Thomas Carter was _not_ being interrogated, only debriefed.

His time with the man had been limited, SIS wanting to clear him to join in the coming invasion, experienced pilots a luxury to an Air Force of boys barely turned men.

And he knew the man's resolve. He flew, as an American, with Eagle Squadron. And had signed up in the face of the knowledge that joining the armed forces of another country had been ruled illegal by the Yanks. In fact, he and the others had lost their citizenship in agreeing to do so, becoming 'men without a country'.

The American Congress had only this year passed a blanket pardon for such men, giving their citizenship back.

Staring down such a drastic punishment, deciding to fight for Britain would not have been for the faint of heart.

**LONDON – May 1944 - **"And you abandoned her, you say, to the Jerries?" he asked, sparing little time for introductions. "You saw this very lieutenant that had incorrectly imprisoned you without regard to your status as a POW-this man without honor who has commandeered our Barnsdale estate, _saw_ him take her into custody? And you did _nothing_?" even he felt the muscles in his neck strain and begin to cord.

"I saw him arrive on the landing strip," the flier responded, sounding very much of the recordings Clem had already listened to of him and his measured, cool delivery. "I saw him with her. I know nothing of whether she were taken into custody. I did nothing. There was nothing to be done. Had I tried to go back he would then have had us both. I could be of no help to her."

The man's eyes were clear, empty of any contrition, as though to say, so echoes the state of my conscience on the matter: clear.

"And so there _is_ no help for her," Clem declared, roughly. "And no way to learn any more."

A silent moment passed.

"There is the Nightwatch," the flier said after taking a long drag on his Player's Navy Cut fag.

"Nightwatch?" Clem's voice modulated from accusatory to inquisitive. "What is that? How do you mean?"

He saw the other man tense at his curiosity as though it were unexpected, tense at his lack of familiarity with the term.

The flier circled back to his original answer, acting as though he had not made any other comment, not dropped the word 'Nightwatch'. This interview, after all, was not being recorded. "Getting myself re-captured would have negated the risk she took in seeing to it that I escaped."

Clem shook his head. "And yet she is left there with _no one_ to fight for her, with nothing but what I am sure is only the coldest of comfort now; in that you escaped." He bit off the end of the word.

In a rare moment of breaking with the question-answer protocol, the other man spoke out of turn. "I daresay," his voice was low, cool—bringing to mind the fact he was not a hostile here, no enemy of SIS. In fact, an important ally in this moment. He took another slow drag on his cigarette, glanced over to Clem before holding out his very steady hand and staring at the burning tip as he spoke. "Your kind know little enough of what might prove a comfort to those unjustly imprisoned."

Immediately, coming to himself as after a dousing of coldest water, Clem retracted his speech. "I apologize. Of course. You must understand, my shock at this news has more than gotten the best of me."

The flier nodded his acceptance of the apology. Slowly.

"While you were in hiding, did you encounter any sort of Resistance? Any level of organized underground that we might somehow contact—perhaps through BBC—that might prove of any help to her?"

This time he received no answer at the ready.

"It's alright," he attempted assurance. "I've been made head of Channel Islands at this point. All information goes through me."

Another moment of silence. In the eyes of the flier, the slightest squint.

"You're lying," the flier told him, calmly, matter-of-fact.  
>"What?"<p>

He ashed the cigarette. "Your father recanted his monograph before he died. Your sister—wherever she is now—is widely known as consorting with the enemy. The Jerries occupy your island home, retaining your own staff as theirs. And there is the not small matter of the," he gestured to the picture of the boy Clem had only been given a quarter hour ago. "And his mother, who regularly, and to spectacular reviews, entertains none less than the Alderney Kommandant." He paused for a moment, as if to let his list sink in. "You have been placed in charge of _nothing_. They would never trust you with such an appointment. Even if all I have just laid at your doorstep were nothing more than malicious gossip, it would be career suicide to place a man as unfortunately connected as yourself into a position of such power. Were you to have boasted you were in charge of North African intelligence gathering I would have believed you without reservation. But this? In this, you lie. No Nighten will ever ascend to such a position while the Occupation holds," and he sat back in his chair as though the interview were over.

"Tell me again how you came to have this?" Clem backtracked, and asked for a repeat of the story of the child's picture.

"She slipped it into my uniform pocket when I could not see what it was," the flier said. "What is he to you?"

Clem saw no reason to play coy with this man. As he wanted full transparency from him, so he would give it on his own account. "Without a doubt, the child of Eva Heindl," he confessed, "whom you have delineated as this Kommandant's present paramour. And without a doubt, from the striking looks of him, _my_ child. My son."

* * *

><p>As he exited the shop with wrapped packages for both Eva and Seth, his son, he found he was both relieved and dismayed to note that it was unlikely, even once the war were over, that Mitch, Eva and Seth would live in London. The rumors and knowledge of her collaboration with Vaiser too potent (and likely to remain so for some years to come) for them to settle comfortably among society there. A lesser lord such a Bonchurch marrying a commoner would prove a slight indignity, but certainly nothing to the grand scandal of his marrying both a notable lord's former paramour, the mother to that man's child, and the lover of a notorious Nazi.<p>

He was dismayed that Seth would generally be distant from him (though, he tried to reassure himself, not any greater a distance than when a young boy was sent away to school), relieved on Claire's account that she would not have to face society in the wake of such relations being nearby, _and_ relieved for Eva, as he hoped the Islanders (among whom she—and her family-had always been, rightly so, great favorites) might deal more kindly with her recent past, themselves better understanding the harsh choices of Occupation.

He hoped.

Beyond him he could sight masts in the harbor, fishing boats not taken out on the waters this day. Strangely one seemed to call to his mind-smaller than the others—not built so much as to function well for fishing, but rather for pleasure trips.

His hands itched as he saw her, sense memory tingling in their tendons. It was the wood of her hull they had planed.

Yes, the very boat he had been at building that fateful summer before the war. That summer of Eva...which led to Seth.

Immediately he set off to find out from the harbormaster who laid claim to her now, pay that tenant a visit before he returned to Guernsey.

Ask what strange trip the _Knight and Lady_ (named by him but never christened) had taken in arriving _here_.

* * *

><p><strong>USA - Albuquerque, New Mexico - 1955 –<strong> In the wake of answering the front door buzzer, Elerinne Vaiser had been able to manage little more than a wider opening of the door and a stilted gesture toward the rear patio doors, outside of which Allen could be found nearby the grill. Her cat's-eye sunglasses shielded the visitor's eyes from the look of shock and despair that flooded her own with tears at the sight of him standing there, at her taking in his arrival.

They were having a party. It had been natural to expect any number of guests to come to the front door. Natural to go and answer it without expectation of anything (or anyone) else being there.

But of all people on earth, _that_ man. The man from the windmill the night Lady Marion was shot. The look on his face that night had haunted her in more than one of her nightmares over the passing years. Her feet raced to her bedroom, the small dressing table she had there. She collapsed upon the matching stool, her knees going to the floor, her upper body catching on the upholstered velvet seat as though it were a prie dieu from her convent school days.

She tried to breathe, tried to imagine what his arriving here could possibly mean. Tried to stem the flood of black coursing down her face from runny eye makeup with the palms of her hands and sides of her fingers. She gulped for air, tried to regain control of herself.

Her only real connection or understanding of him lay within the conundrum of Lady Marion. He was always one-half of a truth for her. And he was here, now, from who-knew-where, to see Allen.

_What could it mean?_

_Was he here to hurt him? To take him back to Guernsey? _

_Was he, instead, here for her?_

_Be brave, stupide fille,_ she told herself. _Don't make him face this alone. Whatever it is._

She pushed herself up from the stool with all deliberateness, and reached for a box of tissues to repair her face and get herself back out on the patio to see what was next to come.

* * *

><p>Following the directional wave of the Kommandant's daughter, Robin walked through the house, which proved longer than it was wide. Stepping through the space of but two rooms led him to double glass sliding doors that opened onto a poured concrete slab, and a backyard complete with swimming pool.<p>

His arrival here suddenly seemed remarkably surreal; the sleek, Modern furnishings and newness of the home, the idea that of all people on earth Fraulein Vaiser had met him at the door, the further idea that Allen was meant to be located just beyond the threshold of these doors. He had not seen Dale in long years. Dale not liking to travel, and him consumed with his job which required almost perpetual, unannounced travel.

The investigator, the British commando yet inside him, recalled to his mind the fact that when Eleri Vaiser had spoken to her housekeeper she had spoken in Spanish—a Spanish not Mexican in accent, nor of the Continent. He did not know what it meant (but still it stuck in his mind), did not yet fully know what it might mean that he had found her here.

* * *

><p>Out-of-doors there was an open cooker smoking, a pristinely-kept in-ground pool, young landscaping, clusters of people chatting and drinking, some lawn furniture and a cart for drinks, ice bucket included.<p>

He was not at all dressed for such an occasion. His suit was dark in color (he still wore its jacket and necktie), and seemed overly formal in comparison with the other guests, dressed more along the lines of Eleri's casual bright yellows.

"O'Dell!" he heard one of the male guests call out Dale's new name, trying to locate his host.

Robin turned to look about himself, and caught Allen (now, said O'Dell) looking at him, barbeque spatula in one hand where he had been working at the open cooker, turning what appeared to be steaks.

For a moment the man's mouth hung open in surprise, and then Allen walked toward him, smiling, his face quite suddenly overcome with pleasure, and announced, "You're here. You came. You're here." For a moment it looked as though he would hug him.

Robin watched, waiting for what would come next.

And then a beat passed, and the expression on Dale's face morphed, and his voice bottomed-out. "You're here."

"I am here."

"And…Consuela let you in?"

"No."

"No?"

"No."

At that moment a growing-tipsy female dipped into the space that still separated them. "No, I heard Ellen, our _darling_ Ellen go and answer it. Didn't she?"

"She did," Robin agreed, without correcting the woman as to the Fraulein's true name.  
>"Isn't she <em>just<em> lovely today? That bold yellow, such a choice in this weather. Our Ellen is always just so gifted with _gorgeous_, isn't she, Alan? A real knockout, _isn't_ she?" The woman was clearly not going to give up until she got an agreement.

"Yeah, she's—" Allen began, wholly non-committal, not taking his eyes off Robin's. "—amazing," he finished, without conviction, words coming to his lips without his seeming to have chosen them.

The glass door of the patio slid back a second time, revealing the very woman in question, her face flushed but her eyes dry, her make-up again in place.

This caused Allen, momentarily, to drop his gaze, and seem to recall himself to where he was. "Everyone," he said, his voice pitched to address the entire party, "this here's my best mate, Robert Oxley." Without hesitance he added, "we served together."

Cheerful, friendly greetings erupted from the guests all around, but after his grand introduction, Allen seemed interested only in the reaction of the Kommandant's daughter standing by the patio doors, near enough to them to change her mind and retreat inside once again if she wished.

Robin, recalling something of his manners, gave a short nod of greeting toward his well-wishers.

"And so you have come," Allen said again, trying, but failing, to find a better way to begin their re-acquaintance after years of not seeing one another. He wondered for only a moment if this were how Carter felt when he had popped up on his front stoop in New Jersey. Assuming that Carter, in point of fact, had feelings.

"Where're you staying?" a gent from the crowd asked Robin conversationally.

Robin was about to open his mouth and give a response when Allen, as if shocked back to life and logical thought, broke in. "Why, he's staying here, of course. _Here_. Ain't you, Ox?"

"Naturally I have taken rooms in the city. The cabbie is waiting to take me there. I see I have made a great faux pas," he used the kinder word than 'mistake', "in coming here today, not knowing you were at having a garden party."

"Says you," Allen responded, with a lopsided grin. "Ellie, go out and have the cabbie bring in Ox's bags, and have Consuela ready the spare room."

As she went to do that, he began almost speaking to himself. "You're going to need a car to get around in. Javier!" he called into the cluster of guests who had returned to their own conversations once Robin had been introduced, "call up the dealership, have them bring by the Bristol 403—the one in oxblood."

As this Javier approached, Allen took out his wallet and peeled off several bills. "And stop by the shops, pick up a few shirts," he gestured to illustrate the one he was wearing, "and trunks for swimming." And here he looked significantly at Robin, "for I know this one'll have naught packed for leisure with him."

Robin merely returned the look. He could not deny that sweat was beginning to form at the top of his collar, that the dark, once-smartly tailored suit coat he still wore was wilting in the Western American sun. He neither denied the offer of lodgings and assistance with wardrobe and transportation, nor accepted it.

"That should handle things for the moment," Allen declared, sending Javier away. "Works for me, at the dealership," he explained, inclining his head after him. "Good man, Javier."

"I am happy for you," Robin said, meaning not only the dependability of Javier, but also Allen's total surroundings.

"It's not a 'garden party', though, Ox," Allen attempted, companionably, to correct Robin's lingo. "It's called a block party. When you invite all your neighbors to a barbeque in your backyard."

"Mmmh," Robin assented.

"Like a shooting party, but without the guns," Allen added, once again back to having trouble holding in the giant grin wanting to plaster itself across his face at Robin's appearance.

"I'm glad to see you Ox, dead-chuffed. Better'n six Christmases back-to-back, it is." Then, remembering himself, "well, have a drink, won't you?"

Robin looked to the well-stocked drink cart, recalled that other than the slightly tipsy woman who had interrupted them, no one else at the party seemed to have had too much.

He looked back to Allen, knowing they would have no time to talk now, in the midst of this 'block party', having no idea what, other than new wealth and community status, had happened to his man since Allen's last letter to John.

He had come to share the urgent news of Marion, to enlist his help and to receive Allen's debrief about his trip to find what he could of his former contact, the Russian secretary. But Robin, unable, and unwilling to shake the unsettling truth of finding the Kommandant's daughter in residence here, worked to steel himself against the contagious nature of Allen's smile, swallowed back his exciting news, choosing to treat the entire situation as a potentially hostile one. He leveled his gaze, and warily cautioned, "You're at burning the chops."

* * *

><p>…<strong>TBC…<strong>

* * *

><p><strong>AN:** I know this was not the part of the story you all were waiting for. (And I know very keenly, and appreciate that you _have_ been patiently waiting.) I apologize. It had been my hope to post all of "Allen's Story" as a huge chunk, but it became ever clearer that there weren't going to be any real updates for an even longer time if I continued to wait to do so.

So once again (as with Chapter 6) I don't feel like this is really a complete chapter movement. But it is what I have ready to post.

Very stoked to finally be getting to write the next bits, and can't wait until they're ready to be shared with all of you.

As always, thanks for those of you still with me, and welcome to anyone new dropping by. –Neftzer (aka Nettlestone Nell)


	13. Chapter 10 - Waiting for the Boil

**USA - Albuquerque, New Mexico - Home of Alan O'Dell – 1955 - **Robin Oxley was trapped. Buried in his own grave.

He tossed and turned, binding sheets already wound in his frenetic sleep to himself, his overwrought mind insensible to the fact he occupied an innocuous spare bedroom in American New Mexico, and was not at all belowground in the abandoned Little Sark Mines.

* * *

><p>Far above ground, in the sky they were coming, coming. The roar of large engines in great strength and number, flying south. They zoomed, they rumbled, ack-ack from the Islands' guns exploded upon and among them, but they did not stop in coming.<p>

It was time.

D-Day had arrived, and Unit 1192 lay helpless, unable to serve any part in what was afoot.

It was 6 June 1944.

In a way, that invasion, that day long-hoped-for made no difference. Marion had been dead for weeks. In what could there be to rejoice?

He had taken himself off to the mines when he was not about deviling Jerry for all he was worth. The mines, where he could join her in some semblance of the death he felt. Dirt, darkness, the smell of decay and the bedrock of long-time passing. The always impending threat of running out of breathable air.

In the wake of the planes' roars how he prayed for a cave-in. Prayed for it without asking, even, for the other lads to be spared.

Lungs full of clay, his body broken by the mines' wooden supports. It meant only respite to him, possible relief from his cyclical torment.

The Allies had come.

Be it six weeks or a twelve-month to liberation, he did not know what he was meant to do with himself after it was over.

He had lost so much he no longer knew how to win.

* * *

><p>She awoke to what she thought was another of his nightmares, but soon realized she could feel him, breathing regularly and peacefully against her shoulder. The sounds of distress were further away, through the walls.<p>

Down the hallway, she realized, and not so far as Consuela's room. It was Allen's mate Oxley who was shouting, struggling. Oxley, the man from the windmill. The man who loved Marion.

The party and the evening beyond it had become no less strange in the hours after Oxley's arrival. He held back from the others, perhaps out of unfamiliarity. Perhaps out of something more. He was quiet, even while being acceptably social with their guests. He seemed off-balance, as though someone had asked him to keep a glass of water on his head while rocking back on his heels.

Certainly Allen (an absolute whiz at such things) had increasingly attempted to draw him out of his silence and seeming coldness with little success.

Oxley had excused himself and turned in early, citing jet lag, changing time zones and a desire to see them all in the morning.

What had been left of the party at that time had shortly wound down, the guests had gone home and the tasks of tidying and straightening were tackled by her, Allen and Consuela until they had all felt the need to seek their own beds.

She had not pointed out, as they traveled down the hallway to the bathroom and their bedroom beyond it, that a light was still very clearly visible under the spare room door. The room with the man inside it who claimed to so desperately need sleep.

* * *

><p>The sounds of night terrors did not go away, and she pushed back the covers and sat up on the mattress, not really wanting to but feeling she ought to go and check on their guest.<p>

She did not allow herself to fully admit that Oxley's fretting unsettled her nearly as much as his unexpected appearance had.

He still had not declared his intent for this visit. Certainly his behavior at the party seemed to strongly support the idea that his visit was not a pleasure-seeking one. No one, she thought, could be that ill-suited at having a pleasant time.

She had asked Allen, just before they turned in, what he made of his friend's showing-up, and he had assured her his visit was merely a social one, that Oxley would loosen up overnight and into the next day. That by the time they were looking for another to make them a foursome at the clubhouse tomorrow he would be nothing but amusing anecdotes and charming manners.

She had been too afraid of the truth to tell him she feared the worst: that Oxley had come for one of them. If not her, then Allen. Too afraid to ask if she ought be so.

She took a step away from their bed, and closer to the door.

"Wot's this, my hen?" Allen called after her sleepily, his arm lifting up, sending his hand out to drowsily try and pull her back beside him.

Another cry sounded, and she stood stock still in the wake of it, her ears attentive, her senses on the buzz. She tried to remind herself to breathe.

"Where you goin'?" he asked again, brought fully alert by the noise.

"To settle him down," she said, hoping her voice didn't quake with her apprehension of it, "I suppose. Like when you…"

"No," he answered her only a tone shy of sharply, "_not_ like when you… _You_ cannot go in there," he told her, now up on his elbow. "You are not what he needs to see in this moment in your—" he threw his hand up to illustrate her sheer floor-length negligee and matching robe.

She did not protest, having looked forward to the task not one bit, but she wasn't able to stop herself from saying, "that he does not need to see a German?" she asked rhetorically, her voice climbing into a high range, though she did not wish it to. "That he does not need to be reminded he sleeps under the same roof with the Kommandant's daughter?"

Allen looked back at her as he quick-pulled on his trousers, thinking she wished to have a row. "You're very pretty in that, you know," he told her. "Right fetching, El," and then he was all assurances. "He's not had time to get used to you is all. You know I couldn't—_didn't_-write John as to who the new Mrs. was…" He grabbed for his glasses, which he only wore at home and during hours he was not working. His old Saintly Six injury had flared up with age, and he had begun to need them more frequently, but had balked at the four-eyes stigma. 'Not very Gable,' he had told Eleri with a shrug. 'Maybe not,' she had commiserated, 'but very Cary Grant'. So he had agreed to have the prescription filled.

"Tell him I am not the Kommandant's daughter anymore," she charged him, her tone now reasonable, set. "Tell him."

"Right," he agreed but without consideration or pause. "Will do…If it comes up," he throw-away promised, and got himself down the hall.

She lay back down, but knew it was unlikely that she would sleep again that night.

* * *

><p>"Wha'd'ye want, Ox?" Allen asked, having roused Robin into consciousness and awareness of his present surroundings, and had the suggestion accepted that they adjourn down the hallway into the kitchen for something to drink. "Coffee? Cuppa? Summat stronger? Cuppa <em>with<em> something stronger?"

"You _may _stop at nannying me, Allen," Robin responded somewhat testily, unused to having his nightmares interrupted. "Cuppa," he chose. "Nothing stronger necessary."

Allen put the kettle on and walked over to join Robin where he had sat down at the small kitchen table.

Hands in his pockets, Allen took a moment to lean against a nearby cabinet. "Wot was it, then," he asked of the nightmare, a kink in his brow. "Dunkirk? The accident?" He did not actually expect an answer, but a body had to start a conversation somewhere.

And for a good moment it looked like Robin would oblige with an answer, until Eleri also found her way into the kitchen.

She entered the room quietly, sighted the kettle on the boil and reflexively moved to get cups. Seeing this, Allen settled himself down into one of the chairs opposite Robin. The chrome-edged table was small, there could not have been more than three feet separating the two of them.

Without asking, Eleri put a cup down in front of Robin, avoiding any refusal by him to take it from her hand.

Once on the table he took it and touched it, though it was empty, as they waited for the kettle to boil.

"I hunt them, you know," he said to the air between he and Allen, not forgetting Eleri listened in. "Men like her father."

His face reminded Allen of times long past playing cards with Robin. A man trying to size up a bluff.

"It has been my sole vocation these last ten years," he continued. "Quietly slipping around from country to country, on Crown business."

His eyes flicked up to see if Allen followed, though Dale had always more or less understood the nature of Robin's post-War work, certainly it had never before been so plainly outline.

"In the beginning, and still from time to time, it is the tedious task of interviewing survivors. Survivors of the camps. Trolling for any detail, however small, that might lead us to Jerries who slipped through our fingers."

Allen wondered if it were only to him that the temperature in the room seemed to be dropping.

As Robin spoke on, his tone informative but a shade too detached to truly be detached, Eleri moved toward the icebox, reaching around toward the back of the top behind what appeared to be a large cookie jar. Allen's eyes did not stray from Robin's, but her actions were not lost on him.

"Many nights," Robin was saying, "the nightmares are not even mine. They are the memories of those persecuted and murdered. They are of lives cut short that _I_ never lived." A grey pallor, a ghostly greyness came over Oxley's face. But it did not last.

Just as it was regaining its healthy color, and he was about to speak again, Allen caught Eleri's hand where she had been slowly moving closer to the table with the kettle.

"Ellie," he said, his hand easily encircling her wrist, his tone even-handed and unworried. "Put the gun down," he shook his head at her. "That won't be needed here."

Her eyes shot over to his like two disbelieving bullets, but she agreed to let him guide her hand to the center of the table and relinquish the weapon onto the lazy susan.

Robin's eyes rested there, his mouth still open from where he had stopped speaking.

"She thinks you're here to hurt me," Allen said to Oxley by way of explanation, the color of apology in his voice.

But Robin did not seem interested in his explanation. Without breaking his gaze with Dale, he over-spoke the last of Allen's words: "Marion is alive. I have proof."

At this there was a clatter where Eleri sat down the kettle she had been holding in her other hand a bit too hastily upon the Formica tabletop. She had not managed to pour out a single cup.

The boiling kettle, to the notice of none present, began to silently scorch the tabletop.

Silence, only breathing, only the lone clock's tick.

It was now Allen who did not break with Robin's gaze. "Proof?" he asked, conversationally. "You have _proof_?"

Robin did not immediately respond. He looked away from Dale, looked over toward Eleri, making eye contact with her for probably only the first time since she had opened the door to him.

He looked down to the handgun she had been induced to surrender. He looked back to her, and caught her stealing a glance at Allen.

He looked back to Allen, inclined his head slightly to the right.

"That was a right-sudden announcement," briskly Dale went in to spin mode. "Not at all what I thought you were about to share, were it, Love?" he tossed off the redundant question toward Eleri, who proved she had none of his quick-witted grease to _her_ tongue. The best she could manage was to pick up the kettle, ignore the charred marking it had left, and shakily reach for an empty cup.

* * *

><p>In the light of his 'read' of the situation, Robin's mind, his understanding, began rapidly to combust.<p>

He did not have to examine the tableaux before him; his response was one entirely of gut feeling. (A gut whose feelings had kept him alive in far more incendiary confrontations.) Of utter certainty that he was being—had been—played.

"Sod me," Oxley exploded in verbal ice, his voice pitched low with suspicion even as he said the words. Said with a hush of disbelief.

"You know." He announced for them, as though only that moment discovering this fact. "How long have you known?" Still he hardly sounded as though he had the breath to form words.

It was lost on neither Allen nor Eleri that his eyes fell on the loaded weapon still lying upon the lazy susan.

"Sod me," he said again. "Sod you," more frantic this time, hand scrubbing at his forehead. "Ha-have you always known?" he asked, begged-a madman's confusion glinting in his eye. He threw himself back from the table, the chair he was in slamming to the floor as he abruptly stood. And then, in an instant, his tone modulated to hurt, to disbelief. "Is this why you kept Gisbonnhoffer from me? Refused to find him a place to hide on Sark?" Ten years passed might well have been but an hour gone.

"Is this more of that, then, Soldier?" Robin barked. "Refusal to-? Betrayal? A trick from the first moment? WHAT? Speak quickly and save your life," he told Dale. His voice had begun to shake, "as here in this kitchen stand the very two people who swore upon their _souls _she was seen murdered…her body," his voice threatened to break, "desecrated, lying on a heap with the psychic's," his jaw hardened. "The very two who swore upon their eternal souls no trace of her could be found, not for all their searchings. Speak quickly and save _both_ your lives, Dale, for in this moment no man on earth more owes me theirs than do you."

**...TBC...**


	14. Chapter 11

**USA - Albuquerque, New Mexico - Kitchen of Alan O'Dell – 1955 - **"No!" Allen protested, dizzy as a dog chasing his own tail, his quick mind was rushing on so`. "We did _not_ know! Not from the beginning. We believed it all, all was just as we said: the body, the marks, Tyr with her," sweat had burst out on the top of his forehead, wetting his hair there. His glasses threatened to fog. "The scene on Alderney was just as you have been told. _No_ lie, _no_ gloss, no spin to it. Upon my very life."

"And upon hers?" Robin asked archly, indicting Eleri, bitterness unfamiliar in his voice.

Before Dale could answer, both were surprised when Eleri herself spoke. "Nearly two years," she said, succinctly. "We have known for nearly two years."

Robin gasped, something like a sob, something like the sound that follows a fist into the gut. He did not have to point out the essential time that had been wasted in not tell him straightaway.

Allen was shaking his head. "'Twas found out in the search for Annie," Allen confessed, chewing on his lip, but still looking of a man being told to jump and ready to ask how high. "Marion had not been killed. The body Ellie saw was not hers," he explained, dressing up his explanation as little as possible. "But was meant to be taken as hers. She was, instead, shipped off-island, on to a camp in Germany. Her name changed, her clothes and belongings taken from her."

When he finished he sat, his mouth flat; neither a smile nor a frown. Only, an expression waiting to see what it would become.

"Two _years_ and yet you did not tell me?"

"No," he agreed. "I didn't."

"But that is not the action of a friend," Robin struggled to understand. "Not the action of one loyal. She is my _wife_, Dale—you knew this. Before the others you _knew_ this. How-how can you think to do this?" Robin began to smack the table in front of him with each coming word. "To keep a man believing his wife is dead?" He stilled himself. "A truth untold is still a lie."

"You are right," Allen admitted, the similarity of their present positions to those of a criminal interrogation not lost on him. His tone changed to one of resolve; firm, tenacious. "But I am right, too."

Robin's scoff was hard, explosive. He shook his head and only half-breathed life into the words. "That cannot be."

"It can, Ox. It can," Allen assured him, and the waiting expression of his mouth morphed into the beginnings of an apologetic smile. Before returning his gaze to Robin at the table, he looked over to Eleri, leaning into the convex corner of the countertop, looking very much like she needed its support to hold her up. He looked at her for an extended moment, blinked, and sighed. "Tell me," he asked Robin. "do you still stay at the Tripp when you're in London?"

Tersely, Robin nodded a yes.

"Still own your estate at Kirk Leaves? Got your name back and so on and so forth? Death certificate issued admitted to be a war-time clerical cock-up?"

"And so forth," Robin grimly agreed.

Allen leaned forward, removed his glasses, not wanting anything to come between him and Oxley in this moment, nothing to obscure the utter sincerity in his eyes. "Then you would be easily located by anyone having known you for yourself at any point in your life, yes?"

Robin said nothing. Only looked.

Here Allen put a hand to his own dripping forehead, cupped it there, his eyes now toward the tabletop, for a moment being distracted by Eleri's kettle scorch, rubbing his free hand across it. "And so one of two things happened," he speculated, without making eye contact. "She did not survive the war, in which case little good could come from my telling you she survived the Channels only to lose her life in the hell of a camp in Germany." That said, now he could look up again. "I have lived that day once, Ox, telling you she was dead," he reminded Robin. "_I_ will not live it again."

The air between them had turned hard. Perhaps just slightly less combustible, but definitely still that of the distance between judge and accused.

Robin's tone may have returned to reasonable, but his demeanor had not. "And what, then, is your second possibility?"

"Or, she survived the war _and_ the camp and for whatever reason she does not wish to find you or to _be_ found," Allen asserted, his nearly-a-smile turning sadly sympathetic, "as we've already established that you are easily contactable and hardly living off piste."

Robin was on this like a shot. "Why does it matter if she wishes to be found?" he asked, rushing on. "What has that to do with your keeping a husband and wife apart?"

"If she lives, Ox, it is _her_ keeping herself apart from you." He gave a slow shrug. "I know not why."

Robin spoke so quickly it was hard to know if he'd had time to truly take in all he had been told. "And so where is your loyalty to me, then, Allen? To your commanding officer? Your fellow? Your _friend_? In that scenario you have given you have abandoned that loyalty to me and now place it, instead, with _Marion?_ Is _this _what that crack to your noggin bought her? Fealty to her above all others? _Above __me_? Without question? Without, even, her requiring it of you? Or did that tyre iron only soften your skull enough so that you now reason less sharply?"

Allen did not deny the accusation, and refused to be baited by it. "If she lives, Robin, I do not know why she would not contact you. But I choose to believe that if that is the case she has her reasons."

Eleri, who had been standing to the right, behind Robin (thinking of Allen's earlier caution that she was not who Robin needed to see right now), moved soundlessly to be closer to Allen's chair, to stand by his shoulder. To offer him what support she could. Perhaps to give Robin a second face to put on his list of blame. To lessen the focus on Dale.

Allen slowly continued. "And I believed that I could do nothing but anger and sadden you in bringing you such news."

"No," Robin disagreed, brusquely dismissing him as if he had asserted the earth was in fact, flat. "No. I will not hear it. Otto said," he began, without explaining of whom he spoke. "Otto _said_ when he liberated the camp she was in—she told him she was _already_ wed. Why would she do that? If she had no intention of coming back? Or being with me again? Hmm? Why?"

Allen's face contracted at this new information: that Marion had been _found_, liberated from the German camp, survived the war. That Robin had an eyewitness to this.

"The answer is: she would not," Robin replied to his rhetorical question. "The answer is: she needs to be found. _The answer_ is hiding somewhere in the story that you must tell me—everything, starting with the smallest detail and in relating it finding the smallest, infinitesimal fraction of _that_ detail that decodes the whole. I have done it one-hundred times by now. Searching for and finding such a missing piece will prove no different."

"But have you the money, and the time to pursue such an enterprise?" Eleri spoke up and asked, her eyes large, still half-frightened at the cresting-on manic Robin at her kitchen table and the intensity of his resolve.

"I have left the Service," he said to her, "to embark upon this, my life's work. As for money, Marion will not care when I find her if I have paupered us. We lived quite happily once with not a coin between us to rub for luck. I shan't need to worry about that."

"If you are determined," Allen ventured, "and I see that you are, should you need it you shall have mine."

"Yes," Robin agreed, as though the offer were nothing more than formality and he already had a right to such. "And _you_ shall only ask 'when?', and 'how much?' should I call upon you and require it."

Allen, understanding Robin at least as well as Robin understood himself, closed his eyes and nodded. Oxley was agreeing to move past their differences in judgment where the disappearance of Marion was concerned, trading bickering for action, exchanging the right to revenge—to punishment-for the right to command. Threats may continue to be spoken from time to time still, but no violence would be enacted. His face, and Eleri's Fiestaware, were safe. Robin was hurt and angry, but he had a task, now, an outlet for his energy.

No, he would never agree with what Allen had done, never see it Allen's way. He would, most likely, go forward acting (and believing) that Allen was the chastened child in the matter, caught now in his wrongdoing and wholly penitent.

But he was not. Nor would he be. Allen had spent too long agonizing over what to do about the knowledge of Marion to be anything but at peace with his final decision, now. Let Robin think what he would. Marion would understand. Just as she would understand that now, Robin had her scent, and refusing to help him at this point would matter little to the eventual outcome of his search.

Oxley was too effective a leader and a hunter to spin his wheels for long. He would find Marion, or what there was left of Marion in this world. He would know the story of her life since last he saw her.

And Allen, as he had dreaded, would be there to pick up the pieces, if need be. To, if needed, live that day again.

Marion would understand that.

"Now," Robin looked to both of them, sincere, but less menacing. "You will tell this story of yours, in such a persuasive way that I will not feel a need to pick up the gun lying upon this table. Fraulein Eleri?" he prompted Eleri to go first.

"I am not some fraulein," Eleri came close to snapping at him, her inner self torn with the way he had been talking to Allen, the fact he could not (or would not) see Allen's decision to not speak in the same, compassionate light it had been made. "I am a proper Missus."

"What? A white wedding?" Robin asked, tolerance quickly falling out of his tone. "And who, then," he invoked the idea of her father's identity, "gave you away?"

Allen had his arm around Eleri's waist, squeezing her before she bit back.

"Ox," he asked, something resolute, though couched as pleading, in his tone, "don't talk to her like that. She's my wife."

The preventative effects of his squeeze on Eleri did not last long. "'Twas not like that," she lobbed at Robin's inference about her father's place in her life, unable to articulate how frightened Marion's stranger—Marion's _secret husband_—made her feel, and so instead acting out with the only weapon at her disposal, her tongue. "You—you—_le goddam_. You come here like—you island monkey—with no manners…"

"Elerinne!" Allen bit off the ending before it was one entirely of sharpness, "_don't_." And here he was pleading. "He's me best mate the world over. There's lots been said already tonight," he looked up at her where he still sat at table, quietly beseeching her to go above and beyond in keeping the peace, his hands drawing her down into an empty chair, "and more to come. Let us keep our heads about us, hmm?"

Robin's brows had jumped at the translated-from-German slur she had lobbed in his direction, but he was too keen to learn Allen's story to let even one of the Kommandant's daughter's tempers derail the moment. "Then by all means," he agreed to let her remarks pass, unanswered, "begin."

And the clock struck two.

**…TBC…in "Dale's Tale"**


	15. Chapter 12 - Postcards from the Dead

**South America – BRASIL, City of Salvador da Bahia –** **1954** **-** It was an unremarkable day. The weather was what he had come to expect from this new climate, the ocean and bay to the East, the steam of the jungles further inland.

He had been in town for nearly a month, having come directly here from the North of France. He had not left Jersey until he had found what he had come for, there. His trip had proved to be one of disappointment. One whose outcome Carter would have experienced no surprise at learning: Anya Grigorovna, exiled Russian baroness that she was, was dead.

He had tracked her transfer from Alderney and the Kommandant's residence to the Todt labor taskforce led by _Oberseer_ Jarl Derheim from a headquarters on Jersey. She had been sent to work there, but, as the Kommandant had shared with him long ago, _not_ in a secretarial capacity.

Due to the Jerries' general lack of concern for their workers, and specifically for their workers escaping from a locked-down island, Todt workers were often allowed to roam the St. Helier streets at night. It had proven easier to let the starving workers forage in the darkness than to feed them. Afraid of the Germans, of disease—and sometimes merely of the 'quality' of people Todt had enslaved: political dissidents, Communists, homosexuals, intellectuals at odds with the present leadership, and Gypsies-Islanders were not at all keen on extending a helping hand toward these people reduced to mere shadows of their former humanity.

When morning roll call would come (with its litre of milkless, sugarless coffee), Todt workers would have returned to their pens to start the day anew building Hitler's fortifications and mining the beaches.

Except on the rare occasion.

There was no real way to know now, years later, why Annie had proved the exception: pretty girl, less badly-used, not-yet-starving, perhaps. One of Jersey's main men of what little Resistance there was on-island had sheltered her among his own family. She, in-turn, had helped him devise new codes for his carrier pigeon enterprise, meant to coordinate a movement against the Germans on both Guernsey and Jersey.

Carrier pigeons were, by order of the Occupation, illegal, but this bloke had managed to get special allowances made for him. He had been tasked with caring for Officer Count Werner von Himmel's feathery pets while their master was recuperating from his Todt-mine injury.

After that it had been easy, as von Himmel had re-styled himself following his exit from the military into the psychic cabaret act Joss Tyr. As Tyr he found himself still in need of housing for his quartet of doves. And no one was going to cross Prinzer's particular pet. _Or_ the Islander who kept said pet's pets.

Messages began crossing the distance between the two islands. And continued even when Tyr was re-located with his master to Guernsey. Until Avia, Tyr's particular favorite of his feathered piteousness, failed to return to Jersey. At that time the network proved broken, and never was repaired.

Sometime during this, Annie was turned in by fearful Islanders, her hiding place betrayed.

By the few accounts Allen could find, her time aiding the Resistance on Jersey had been a fulfilling one. And her time following re-capture brief. What Jerry records there were showed she had been immediately tasked back to the hardest of labor details. Within the week she was dead.

He had found several contradictory accounts of her death: merely a work site accident, or a deliberate act of sabotage—he would never know.

Within the month her clothes—a few of the prettier ones she had been bought to wear in her clerical capacity on Alderney—found their way to the town swap. Clothing and material—even thread—had become scarce by then. The few Ivoroid buttons, even, on her shirtwaists were now ridiculously valuable.

Allen had managed, with great effort and dogged focus, to find the daughter of the woman who had bought one of Annie's skirts that day.

"You would not believe what she gave for it," the daughter had said. "You would have thought it were made of pure gold."

He had looked at the daughter, of an age now that showed she could not have been more than five or six at the time. He wondered what she could recall of those days, whether she understood that a bit of hardy, unstained, unripped cloth had been equal to or better than gold.

"You don't still have it?" he had foolishly inquired—_what good could it do him?_

"Matter of fact," the daughter had told him, "my mum packed up a trunk after Liberation. Filled it with things from those days. Said she would keep it always, in case we needed to remember. Needed to be reminded of those days, of what happened."

"And you still have it?"

The daughter gave him a narrow look. "I don't need musty, worthless bits in a trunk to remember Granny passing away on the only bed we hadn't broken up for firewood because she had decided to stop eating so the rest of us could have more. To remember Germans taking away my playmates' parents and sending them home bruised and bleeding because they wouldn't give the names of where they got their phony extra ration card. But yes, I still have it."

She showed him up to the loft.

The small trunk was indeed full of Occupation things: shoes with only paper trying to cover holes worn through their soles, several German edicts that were circulated to Islanders, a few now-empty packets from the Vega boxes. Certainly nothing he hadn't seen before. Hadn't, himself, lived among those years ago.

The skirt was near the bottom, folded carefully. He could not judge whether it had been altered, taken in so severely, because of the nutritional state of the woman who bought it, or (lost to his memory with the passage of time and the present norm of routinely seeing healthy women) if Anya, herself, had been so dangerously slender.

It had seemed silly to ask for a moment alone with it. It was an inanimate thing—not even something Annie would have chosen for herself. It had been little more than something to make her attractive bait for Gisbonnhoffer, he knew now. Dressing up Andromeda to meet the sea monster.

He came very close to feeling foolish in that stranger's loft, feeling borderline ridiculous over having such emotional feelings about the abandoned clothes of the woman who had needed a Perseus and had instead got him. Until his hand felt something crinkly along the skirt's hand-stitched hemline.

He hadn't stepped down the ladder from the loft to ask permission, he simply snapped the slender thread of the hem and unrolled what little fabric there was there until the slip of paper fell into his hands.

And with it he had Anya's story, the words she wished to leave the world with, in her own hand.

It was not the whole, naturally (whoever found the time to share that?), but it was not only her words that mattered, here—though she had chosen them well. It was the fact that in all the uncertainty of her fate she had managed to do so at all. To write just the sort of testimonial the courts were now, a decade later, looking for in order to bring such men to justice. And she had done it with clerical panache, writing her statement flawlessly, beautifully, in a trio of languages.

"I, Anna Grigorovna Lendova," the paper read, in feathery graphite, "Russian-born prisoner upon these Channel Islands, once held at the Alderney Treeton Camp for a secretary, then tasked to manual labor with Operation Todt, denounce Island Kommandant Heinrik Vaiser, Todt Work-Gang _Oberst_ Gottleib Weisenschlag, and Herr Lieutenant Geis Gisbonnhoffer and their compatriots for the following crimes against their fellow man; in general and in particular as follows..."

There was nothing left of her upon the skirt, he knew that. Not even a long hair left behind. How could there be, a decade later? No, there was nothing left of her in the world that could be found—even her body's resting place was unknown, untraceable somewhere under the sands and rock of Jersey.

This small paper was all that could be said to be hers—that could be used to prove (outside his own memories) that a woman such as Annie existed. No children of her own, no husband, her family wiped out of existence.

He looked at the paper; how fragile it was, how easily damaged. And yet how much power it held, that slender slip of paper with that light dusting of her handwriting.

It was its own Holy Testament, he thought. It was a sword that would enable a proper vengeance to be taken.

So slight it could have weighed little more than a human soul, but how many souls—not only hers—did it represent, did it stand witness of? Men and women and children voiceless to dictate their stories, snuffed out with no one to advocate for them.

But for Annie.

Clever Annie. Always anxious, her life one of a bird in an overly small cage, its keepers cruel and capricious-but Annie, always looking for a way to help.

She _had_ helped others. Carter, Djak—others. She had stayed behind for the sake of her family. In the end, she had stayed behind to help _him_. And it was her end, because she had done what he asked.

Never telling him the cost she was paying along the way.

He imagined her for a moment, standing at the front of the other occupants of Alderney, where—had they ever been let out—they would have flooded the parade grounds of the Treeton Camp. As always, she was the only one in color, the only one tidy, clean for her work and life in the office hut. He thought of her eyes, of what terror her life must have been.

And he thought of her courage.

And he thought of both the hope and the lack of hope this paper implied. Hope, that it should one day be located and acted upon. And the lack of hope. Written down and hidden, it was, showing her own doubt that she would be able to tell the right someone the same damning things in person. Her final communication with this world.

_How long had she worn it, hidden within her hem? Had she ever tried to give it to someone? Had she ever told another living being all the things those curs had done to her?_

After a few minutes he knew he was crying. 'Like a little girl', he might have joked in company, but he knew: not like a little girl. Rather, like a man. Like a man who had swallowed his sorrows during the war until he was full of them, and now they would either poison him or spill over.

Like a man reading someone else's story that he suddenly realizes is also his own.

Someone else's loft, someone else's witness statement. For all that the Channels were British soil, really—someone else's country. But _not_ someone else's war.

His war.

Final battle yet to be fought.

* * *

><p>He still carried Annie's paper in his pocket, though he could have recited it verbatim if called upon. He was here on <em>her <em>errand, after all. Looking for Jarl Derheim, whereabouts unknown, expecting that through him he could locate this Work-Gang _Oberst_ Gottleib Weisenschlag (likewise whereabouts unknown) on Annie's list.

Taking care of Derheim along the way—though he had not been singled-out for naming in the denouncement—would stand as a side-project.

All information that he could find strongly suggested Derheim had managed to avoid capture and replanted himself (with some help from sympathetic governments and German émigrés) in this corner of South America.

But his search over the last few days seemed to be drying up. Now he was out for a walk to clear his head and decide on his next course of action while waiting for his most recent enquiries (and the cash he had attempted to grease them with) to come through for him.

The street was busy in the early afternoon, cars not yet locked-tight in traffic on the roadway, but shoppers and the like out and about. He seemed just one among the many. He re-settled the Panama hat he had bought when his flight landed here, thinking that in the heat he'd soon have to remove it and wipe his forehead with his handkerchief. He was just passing by a cinema letting out before the next showing began.

"Mr. Allen!" he heard someone exclaim among the crowd and for a moment his heart seized. He was not presently traveling under that name, and indeed had not used that alias since the war.

"Mr. Allen!" it came to him again, and he cast his eyes warily about until they lighted upon—of all people—Fraulein Vaiser, walking with a man her age and a young girl of about nine. She was holding the girl's hand, and in her rush to push through the crowd toward where Allen was, the girl was being dragged rather roughly and seemingly against her own better judgment through the press.

His heart re-settled into place. No reason to run, here. No need to deny he was 'Mr. Allen'.

They met up, finally, in front of the ticket booth. The fraulein's gentleman hung back several paces from them, but Eleri seemed to have lost any concept she had once had of acceptable personal space. She was immediately so near to him he almost thought that she might expect him to hug her in greeting. The scent she was wearing was half-heady in the heat. Certainly he thought that had she been a tad taller, or in a higher heel, she would be in danger of crushing the front brim of his hat.

The look on her face was one of delight.

"Mr. Allen," she began. "Mr. Allen! Will you not shake the hands? It is long! And I see you here!"

Seeing no reason to be anything less than polite, and finding himself, while curious at her being here, unexpectedly pleased to see her face, he took her offered hand—though it was the wrong one for shaking, as she still clutched the truculent girl with her right.

So they ended up with more of a right-hand-to-left-hand sort of squeeze that only lacked a kiss and a bow to prove quite courtly—and quite beyond the level of formality they had ever settled upon in their past acquaintance.

This caused her to laugh at their moment of awkwardness, and caused him to speak without over-much thought. "Mademoiselle," he began with a string of the usual sort of things one might say to any acquaintance they had not seen or had word of in some years.

But the effect upon her was immediate. "Oh, bless you," she said. "Bless you, Mr. Allen. I have not—no one has—oh, speak to me some more. Say anything—I do not care how dull—-hearing you is like drinking in Heaven's waters!" she proclaimed. Her eyes, he noticed, had begun to squint (though not from the sun) as she spoke on, and the right corner of her mouth may have begun to tremble slightly.

He had not intentionally addressed her in French—which he had spoken little enough with any regularity since the war (although he had just used his fair share of it in his trip to Jersey and the Continent). During the war their conversations had taken place in a sort of patois, he recalled, slipping easily enough from French to English to German when necessary (his a halting German at best: his cover was to have no better grasp of the enemy's language than simple commands), and even sometimes a Dgèrnésiais word thrown in for leaven.

So perhaps it was sensible that he spoke to her that way.

Certainly she was overjoyed that he had.

She went on at a pace so quick, her convent-learned primary language of a diction level far more poshly proper than the gritty French _he_ knew (no matter his total mastery of it) by way of his gran, that for a moment he felt like a drowning man, trying to breathe but only swallowing more water when he came up for air.

But it was a happy sort of dousing. Her face shone, and he did find himself wondering if she had ever looked quite this pretty on the Islands. She had been but a girl then, though one he had assured had 'more than the average allotment of pretty'. His mind did some quick sums. No longer a mere girl. She would be thirty, now.

"You've cut your hair!" he exclaimed as soon as he noticed it, interrupting her.

This stopped her for a moment as she put her hand up to it, where it stopped just below her ears, pressed into place like a brunette Grace Kelly's.

"Oh," she seemed taken aback by his non-sequitur. "That was some time ago."

"'Course," he agreed sheepishly, he had no laid eyes on her in a decade, after all. "'Course it were."

And they smiled at each other. Had he not been so surprised to distraction by running into her, had her reception of him been less keen, he would have thought them both gob-smacked idiots.

His personal comment seemed unintentionally to stem the tide of her conversational onslaught, and momentarily her demeanor shifted. "I suppose," she announced in a tone that seemed to indicate she wished him to disagree with her summation, "I…ought to be going." She cast a look over her shoulder at the man waiting there.

"Yeah, well, right. Sure," Allen agreed, assuming she had to be on her way.

She took a step backward.

"But it's Allen, you should know," he told her. "Just Allen will do quite nicely."

Oddly, the sadly wistful smile she gave him in reply was about the farthest possible expression from those of the woman who had only just been so enthusiastically chatting with him.

His mind recalled to him he had still addressed her as 'fraulein', and 'mademoiselle', when circumstances seemed to strongly indicate she was no longer either. He thought of the wriggly little girl who had not decreased her fidgeting throughout their encounter. _Cor-blimey, Eleri Vaiser as a mother_. Now there was a chilling thought for you.

But in truth, when he did find himself reflecting upon their chance meeting over the next hours and days, the feelings it left him with were overwhelmingly ones of friendship and goodwill. And more than once he caught himself in a ridiculous grin (sparked by something which others around him could have no idea of) recalling moments of their past together, not all of which, he had to remind himself, was utterly fraught.

By noontime the next day some of his recent probes into Jarl Derheim were coming back to him with answers (for good or ill), and he found himself plunging deeper into the mystery of where the German had managed to disappear to. Leaving little room for other thoughts.

**...TBC...**


	16. Chapter 13 - Allen Dale Walks into a Bar

**GUERNSEY – Barnsdale Estate – 1943 – **"Sir? Herr Lieutenant?"

It was Clun, trying, in an unusual instance, to get the attention of Lieutenant Geis Gisbonnhoffer. An honor he generally shunned, preferring always the background to the forefront.

"What is it, Clun? I shall assume it cannot wait, since you have sought me out, rather than having me attend upon the matter at my leisure." Geis had been in a rare moment of daydream, during which he had been trying out a new name for his island estate, one with which he was considering re-christening it: Hoffer Haus. A house of hope. Better than naming your estate for a _barn_, for pity's sake! He had not, after all, even decided to re-build the barn. Its loss was Marion's punishment. When she gave up her childish sulk and returned home, he would let the rubble of it stand until she came to him asking for permission to rebuild it.

He rather looked forward to the day.

Clun, the older man and head of the Barnsdale household, gave a civilized throat-clearing. "The…Kommandant's daughter."

"Yes."

"In the absence—" and here the older man stalled out, finding no genteel word for the recent catastrophic circumstances that had lost the estate both its rightful Lord, and its young Lady.

"Yeeess."

"How is she to be regarded by the staff? There are times since—" he again did not know the proper way to reference the death of Sir Edward, and Lady Marion's subsequent disappearance, and the increasingly more-active role Miss Eleri had begun taking at the estate since demanding staff organize Lord Nighten's funeral against the standing Occupation Code, "when it seems quite clear she believes herself chatelaine, if you will."

"She is to be viewed as Kommandant's daughter, Clun," said Gisbonnhoffer squinting as though he worried there was some trick to the question, "a guest in this home, and accorded such respects as I am sure the staff is qualified to give her."

"Certainly, Sir."

A beat passed. Gisbonnhoffer almost returned to his papers. "Chatelaine? How do you mean?"

"For example, when you are not in residence she wishes to confer with me upon menus and mealtimes. Last week she requested to meet with the housekeeper over which rooms ought to receive a thorough cleaning, as well as the gardener on some matter of cultivation regarding the park that I can hardly, at this moment, specifically recall."

"Clun," _Goodness! How these Islanders could be tedious_. "I can safely say that insofar as Fraulein Vaiser's orders to staff do not countermand any of my own expressed desires for the estate and its population, and infringe upon neither legality nor your own painstakingly conceived idea of propriety for a young lady of her age; when I am not 'in residence' by all means cater to her whims and accept her commands as coming from Barnsdale's—what did you call it? Chatelaine." He corrected himself. "_Provisional_ chatelaine." He gave an impatient sigh. Marion would not be absent forever. "And, Clun?"

Yes, Sir?"

"If she becomes unreasonable to excess," and now boredom entered Gisbonnhoffer's tone, he disliked talking of sums and ledgers and bookkeeping—it reminded him over much of his family's modest shopkeeper roots, "we shall draft a bill for her keeping and have it delivered to the Kommandant."

The old butler's eyes widened behind his spectacles. It was unusual for the Lieutenant to speak so carelessly about challenging his powerful superiors. "We shall, Sir?"

"When the timing is right, Clun," Gisbonnhoffer replied, trying out the title 'Hoffer Haus' in his head one more time, feeling quite pleased with it.

Were such a bill to be drafted, quite possibly that would be the originating address shown upon it. "Naturally."

"Naturally." Clun agreed with a well-practiced detached tone, _for what else could one do when a German made his will known?_

* * *

><p><strong>South America – BRASIL, City of Salvador da Bahia –<strong> **1954** **–** **Taverna of Hotel de Coracao –** For a good day and a half he had been led on a merry chase of information and faked passports and immigration records, possible aliases and necessary under-the-table bribes, all of which were meant to lead him to the man known during the war as _Oberseer_ Jarl Derheim. But not unlike chasing a lovely girl only to discover she's a disposition not unlike vinegar, so it was here.

Derheim turned again to a ghost, and he was little closer to him than when he had first set foot here.

Records seemed to strongly show Derheim had come ashore in Brazil using an alias and a phony Dutch passport (his mother had been Dutch), but _if_ he had stayed in-country, it was proving next-to-impossible to prove so.

Hot on the trail of Derheim or not, lunch must be et. Allen's hotel had a little pub, certainly nothing fancy. Probably why Allen liked it: cozy, not too loud but plenty of activity and bustle at the right times of day. Perfect for meeting someone when the two of you didn't wish to be observed or overheard. And certainly he had been planning and attending plenty of such meetings of late.

It was not a classy place, but they knew how to mix a good _caipirinha_, and he liked their _paes-de-queijo_, even if no one in the hotel had ever heard of proper English tea.

He was just about the catch the eye of the barmaid (her name was Luana, he seemed to recall) and order some of those cheese buns, when he spotted a skirt at the bar—hardly two stools down from where he generally sat.

He had scheduled no meets for today, and was expecting no one.

The _actual_ skirt was of a generous, full cut, now so popular with cloth restrictions due to the war having been lifted. The ankle and lower calf showing where the "skirt" was seated upon a raised stool terminated in a foot wearing a very appealing (and slick) pump.

The knee was outlined, where the legs were crossed, by another fold of skirt, and the elbow sat at a level with a wide, patent leather belt. Leather also no longer a rationed material.

He saw the bracelet on a nicely-turned wrist before the woman in question turned around, the Grace Kelly-waves in her brunette hair very suddenly becoming familiar to him.

Taken by surprise, his eyes bugged for a moment at finding Eleri Vaiser here, a place she would have no business being other than were she attempting to contact him.

As she turned, her face registered nothing like surprise in his being there, rather, she smiled as a person might who was glad to see you.

"Are you alone?" he asked, concern flecking his brow, as before addressing her in his French.

"I should hope _so_," she replied, sounding half-disinterested with the question, indicating to the barkeep she would have another of whatever she had already had.

"Eleri, you—" he stammered. "-can't go meeting me in a place like this without your husband." He was so overtaken with anxiety for the precarious social position she clearly did not understand she had placed herself in he did not realize the oddity of the idea that he should feel any such thing for her at all. "Think of your babe…"

"My babe?" she asked, playing with her empty glass.

"Why, your little girl."

"Grief," she almost chuckled, amused. "You mean Gita."

"'Zat her name, your little one? 'Gita'?"

"Please," she rolled her eyes, her smile of greeting beginning to fade somewhat in the wake of his nervous behavior. "Gita is not my _child_, in any sense of the word. I am expected to be more her nanny than her actual nanny, but she is, in fact, my half-sister." She inhaled, disdain and dislike contorting her mouth. "My mother's 'little insurance policy' against her husband in the wake of the war's ending. I _have_ no husband."

She seemed to think this should put to rest any reservations he had about her attempting to see him in such an atmosphere.

"So the bloke is just yer fellow, then," he asked on, settling himself into the adjoining stool. "Still, he would not like it," he counseled her. "You have not even introduced me to him."

"No," she scoffed, looking at him full-on, "_not_ my fellow," and he could see that she was stunned at how wrong he was getting it all. "He works for my mother. _She_ would call him my bodyguard," her tone was light, conversational. "But jailer is a far more accurate term."

"A jailer—why would you—"

"You haven't heard, back there, on your island?" she asked. "The world is a dangerous place if you are German. If you had anything to do with the war. And we've all had _something_ to do with it, I suppose. Even here, where they come to cower and hide—there are killings and kidnappings."

"No, I—" he stuttered, knowing full-well the 'on the lam' dangers for many a German, "hadn't heard that so much, back on the island." It was obvious she thought him still a resident of the Channels.

"Anyway, I am alone for the moment," she told him, her voice brightening, "but I can't outrun Schmidtznagel, I think is his name. They always bring me back."

"They?"

"Well he is certainly not the first."

"Bring you back?"

"When I've tried to run," she explained, quite matter-of-factly. "To leave."

"So, truly a jailer, then?" he said more than asked. Accepting a drink for himself, he considered how she might have managed to find him—knew he would be here, but did not immediately ask.

"Would you rather speak in English?" she asked, confessing with some embarrassment, "my English is creaky."

"Rusty, Love," he chuckled, letting the ice in his drink knock against his front teeth as he tilted his head back in the drinking of it. "It's gone rusty. And no, it's good to hear you speak, in the way you are comfortable."

She moved to lift her own glass, and the weight of her bracelet pushed the cuff of her blouse down her forearm as she raised her hand to her mouth, revealing a row of half-moon indentations there, red and irritated.

"No, Love," he zeroed in on them, immediately woeful in his concern. "No, is it so very bad?"

Her voice gave a sharp sort of laugh—brief and staccato, "It is very bad, but no, those are not mine. They're my mother's."

"Yer mum—did that to you?"

"I threatened to tell the United States Embassy where my stepfather was."

The rest of the pub fell away. "You know where von Bachmeier is? Really?"

"No," she seemed a little dismissive of his eager response. "I have no idea. She'll realize that soon enough."

"Oh."

"But I did put her favorite evening gown in the cooker."

His eyebrows jumped up his forehead, and though they were talking about deadly serious things, he started to grin. "She'll be—"

Eleri shrugged one shoulder. "I am not worried. She doesn't know where the kitchen is, much less how to switch off the cooker."

At this they both began to giggle like naughty little children. They snickered without sound, like playmates trying to stay hidden in a game of olly olly oxen free, the danger of imminent capture only making the moment that more hysterical.

When the moment had passed, he pressed her, "But how did you know you could find me here?"

She looked at him like his question was too easy to deserve an answer. "You are memorable, Dale Allen, good with dice and ladies. You leave a wake of gossip wherever you go," she shook her head. "You are not a difficult man to track."

He found himself with serious need to think her summation of him over. Certainly he did not wish to be particularly track-able at the moment. It was a little bit like something Robin might say to him, calling him down for being too flash in his tactics. A little bit like something Marion had said to him once: calling him out for being too reckless.

He could not be angry at Eleri's appraisal of him, but he also found neither could he feel particularly proud of (as he once might have) either. Since those days he had better learned his strengths and his flaws. Flash and recklessness no more could be of help to him in what he had set aside for himself to do.

As he thought, Eleri spoke again, running on at a pace so jolly and keen he might have been frightened by it had he not known her better.

"Are you on holiday?" she asked, "but why _leave_ an island for the seaside?"

"Carnaval," he quickly claimed.

"Many emigres visit for it," she agreed, "traveling even as far as from the Argentine. Farmers and the like plan their social year around it. My mother will be very busy with entertainments to organize and attend over the next week." Without a pause she went on. "What is Guernsey like, now? Do you own a business? I always thought you would. Become a businessman. It would suit you. I was thinking about your boat the other day after we met outside the pictures, about you in it. How strange it was that you would never sit. You always stood to steer like you were on guard, waiting for something, impatient. And it came to me: he doesn't _like_ the water. He's never liked it. He stands out of some respect for it, some distrust of it. However did you make your way here? And for Carnaval?" Her tone was disbelieving, but only insofar as that his trip was perhaps somewhat foolish. "You must be doing very well for yourself." She took a brief moment, as though she were considering this, taking in also (it seemed) the cut of his shirt and pants, whether they, too showed his good fortune.

She was going on at such a clip he had had not opportunity to answer any of the questions put to him, and by her continued chatter and sunny delivery of them, it did not appear she was at all displeased with his silent, though attentive, companionship.

But as she looked over his wardrobe and her speaking trailed off, a switch seemed to get thrown somewhere within her, and her face washed off all its cheery delight at seeing him, and something of a cloud passed over it.

"Why did you not come for me?" she now asked, without giving any context. Her face took on a look of deepest concentration, as though she were trying, still—even as she asked for his answer—to puzzle out his actions. "Like Rhett Butler was it that you no longer gave a damn?" she referenced the storyline of one of the random novels he had pinched for her to read. "Because you always cared for me—" she shook her head in the negative and corrected herself with a certain amount of deliberateness, but without any self-consciousness, "looked after me. When I did not see it as such, always so tender in your care of me," she laughed, also without awkwardness, "well, mostly, for the better part."

She waited a moment (though not long enough for him to formulate a real answer). It was a rare instance, indeed, when anyone could gobsmack him into both silence and inaction.

The moment passed. "But then," she said, her observation of his face remaining quite intense, "perhaps you have not considered these things. I have had much time to pay them a keen review."

She held his gaze (though he would have preferred to look away, having nothing right to say on the matter of his abandoning her to Thornton's cottage and to what came next), long enough for it to teeter on uncomfortable.

She looked away, and, presumably seeing Schmidtznagel skulking around the entrance to the hotel taverna, announced, "Time to go," and was gone, leaving enough _reais_ to pay both their tabs.

Feeling like he'd just lived through a particularly torrential downpour, but not feeling the chill of the dousing, he let himself contemplate her empty glass for some time.

**...TBC...**


	17. Chapter 14: Where Do Lonely Hearts Go?

**South America – BRASIL, City of Salvador da Bahia –** **1954** **–** Only an eternal optimist would say things were going well. They were not. They were bloody well awful. Brick wall. Silence on the Derheim-front.

Going so badly he had begun to consider ringing Robin at SIS and seeing if he could lend anything like a hand, either clerical or tactical.

Of course, this was a larger leap than he was actually willing to take. A single man on a mission was one thing. Getting the lads back in Blighty involved was quite another. And it would probably come with rules and regulations and possibly even with an un-ignorable order to stand clear and let the (current) professionals do their job.

He thought he could trust Robin to understand, to shield him from interference, but (as any member of Unit 1192 would tell you) always better to keep oversight out of the picture as long as possible.

If things worsened, if the brick wall continued to hold against his chiseling away at it, he knew where to send a cable.

He would have liked Reddy at his side, actually. A comrade on this quest. But last he'd heard, shortly before he'd taken off to find Carter, Wills and Djak had ended up in Western Canada—a great uncle of hers twice removed or some-such having stowed away on a ship before the war and sneaked in the country, avoiding the immigration ban. This uncle had been the first relative Djak had managed to locate still alive, and she would not hear of settling anywhere else at the moment.

Allen did not know who was further from his present location: Robin, or Wills, but he knew Wills would prove the harder one to rope back into the old chase.

* * *

><p>He was walking past a sidewalk café on his way back to the hotel around tea time when he nearly tripped over an occupied chair sitting well outside the tables' boundaries and onto the comparatively busy pavement.<p>

"Wot in—" he managed to blurt as he caught himself before fully falling.

"Why not sit down, take your tea, here?" he heard in the French of Elerinne Vaiser. "You do so often enough, I am reliably told."

_And there she was. Again_. She had last caught him out at the hotel bar some three days earlier.

It would seem she had already ordered something of a tea service (though he had been in-country long enough to know it would hardly feel of home).

"Regular Sherlock Holmes, you are," he chided her from where he stood, hands on hips, but without any annoyance behind it.

"Well, why shouldn't I take tea with you?" she asked him, almost defiantly, as he obediently sat in response to her pert invitation. "We are old acquaintances, are we not?" She quite suddenly and unexpectedly (in the wake of the moment prior's rebellious reply) managed a rather fetching tilt to her chin as she said this, looking up at him through her lashes.

It was the closest thing to a deliberate flirt she had thrown his way since they had been reunited.

"We are old…_somethings_," he agreed partially to her summation, wondering where 'Schmidtznagel – I think that's his name' was. "Though I cannot recall ever being invited by you to a social occasion before." This he said chiefly to get her goat. It would have made little sense in those days for her to invite her father's driver to tea.

"We dined together often enough in the beginning," she reminded him, her face hinting at the sort of pout she had so often practiced in the days of their original acquaintance.

But something else quickly glossed it over. Something like reason, like sincerity. He thought he saw her actively trying to work against her natural instincts. She really was simply trying to engage in sharing memories with him.

"Dined together? Not at _your_ invitation," he disputed with good humor, stirring the equivalent of three sugars into the tea. Since the war ended (and no doubt in his life prior to the war) he had never been able to get enough sugar.

"No," she agreed, growing quieter, her face bordering on solemn, as he referenced Marion without saying her name aloud. "Not at mine."

As the other day, she seemed to have no particular agenda in ambushing him. It did seem like she simply wished to take her tea with someone, nothing more. Her manner was polite and friendly and as much as he was not a man to turn down an invitation to tea, he was finding himself quite pleased to have found a somewhat kindred soul in this Brazil.

They had each reached for their cups, and taken several sips.

"Do you find Carnaval loud from your hotel?" she asked, conversation turning polite, inconsequential.

"Quite like it, actually," he confessed. "Sounds right jolly most of the time."

"It does not disturb your sleep?" she inquired.

He set down his teacup, and slightly threw his head back, as if considering. "Don't sleep much anymore, actually. So, no. Do you and your-" he almost said bodyguard, and then reverted it to, "_family_ go down much?"

She laughed, placed her hand over her mouth, shielding her teeth where they peeked out from her smile. "Oh no, _never_. Actual Carnaval is not something my mother and her friends wish to involve themselves in. They plan parties around it and sometimes watch from upper balconies, but getting out and walking among it and the 'great unwashed'? No."

"Former nobles, then," he surmised.

"Many of them," she agreed. Her step-father after all, was a Baron, her mother a Baroness and Lady by marriage, though Eleri herself wore no title. "Insufferable snobs whether they are or not."

He almost replied with a forceful set of choice words on such folk, but before he could, her face turned wistful, and she added, "but it seems so lovely, and colorful—like a celebration of joy."

"'Z rowdy party, that's for certain."

"They live here like they're in a bubble, you know," she went on, a propos of nothing. "A time capsule bubble. They are in Brazil, but they refuse to learn Portuguese. They don't particularly wish to eat the local cuisine. They frequent ex-pat clubs and cabarets, order their clothes, even, from Europe. It's so senseless, trying to recapture what they believe was the 'glory' of Germany, years later and in another country. They are all of them hiding, not necessarily from men seeking retribution—but from reality."

He considered, and added to her explanation, "People with enough money generally think they can behave however they wish."

"I have money," she told him. "I still cannot manage to behave 'how I wish'."

"Are many of your mum's friends _in_ hiding?" he asked, trying to play it off—she had brought the topic up, after all.

"I don't know," Eleri replied, seemingly careless of any significance her answer might hold for him. "I am as little-acquainted with them as is possible. Anyone in hiding, I would assume, would have changed their names at the very least."

"And at the most?" he prompted.

"Their physical appearance, their occupation. And if they were smart, their language and their habits."

He smiled. _Good girl. Clever girl_. "But you have just said few of them wish to so blend in to their new country and its ways."

She shrugged. "Perhaps my mother's friends are much like her: a bit player in the larger picture. My step-father, of course, would be a catch for many governments. But my mother—what good is she to anyone except as a possible conduit to him? She's a vain, unpleasant woman with two daughters living a luxurious life seemingly free of politics and interested in no one so much as herself."

"Perhaps," he agreed, though begrudgingly, resettling his cup in its saucer to the sound of the friction of stoneware.

"Do the _Islanders_ plot much in the way of vengeance?" she asked, surprising him by again showing that she believed he was yet resident of Sark or Guernsey.

He considered how best to reply. He had only just come from Jersey, and certainly he knew how things had gone in the days immediately following liberation. "Much of the difficulty on the islands comes from the fact that the Jer—_Ger_mans had so many Islanders seduced or pressured (take your pick) into doing their work for them," he relayed.

"And so islanders revenge themselves upon islanders?" she looked truly surprised.

He shifted uncomfortably in his seat for a moment. It was an ugly truth. "If the word collaborator was profane during the Occupation, it is trebly damning now."

In response, she took a drink of tea, only it was more of an unladylike gulp than the dainty sips she had been managing before.

"If you left here," he asked her, recalling she had once referenced trying to get away, "where would you want to go? What would you want to do?"

She looked up, clearly intrigued by his question. "It is only that I want to claim the right to decide those things for myself," she replied, trying to explain. "Not that I have the answers. Before you came _here_," she attempted to illustrate her point, "to Brazil—did anyone ask you where you wanted to go? Or what you were planning to do once you got there? No. You decided to come to Carnaval. To take the journey. And each day you do simply what you wish. I want the same. That is all."

He took his first finger, pointed it down toward the tabletop. "You would feel safe, then, without this bodyguard your mother provides?"

Her mouth twitched sardonically. "Without being in proximity to my mother, the need for a 'bodyguard' would likely disappear, don't you think?"

He looked into her eyes, into the belief there. Into her desire for him to back-up her conclusions. But in this he was not sure he could. "The world is a dicey place right now for someone with your connections," he told her. He did not reference it, but his mind went back to Rowan, the revenge-obsessed, wrong-headed Constable's son. "There _is_ your father, and your step-father…"

"Yes," she said flatly, but not agreeing with his assessment of her situation. "So the British Navy spent more than a few afternoons telling me after removing me from Mr. Thornton's cottage."

"Do you think they have you followed even now? Watched?"

"My mother believes they do. That they regularly spy upon us, on our lives. Our post."

Still listening to her, he reached for a pastry he thought was called a _pastel frito de frango_, and his arm caused something slender like a book to drop from its place off the tabletop. He reached to retrieve it from the ground under the table.

"Sorry," he chimed in reaction.

As he brought it back up to the table, he saw into it from where it had fallen open.

"Wot's this, then?" he asked, realizing it was a sketchbook, one she had apparently brought along with her to pass the time as she waited for him.

Eleri gave a shrug, the explanation was obvious, and needed not be voiced. She bit into _her_ pastry as Allen swept his hand across page after page of the cloth-like paper decorated in charcoals and the occasional pencil.

It only took looking at two or three pages before he felt a chill run along the back of his neck.

Here was rendered the psychic Joss Tyr performing in a sunny public square, dressed gaily as a party clown, a collection of Brazilian children attending upon his magic.

Here was Marion on a sandy beach, looking into the sunrise, the light upon her face like that of a Madonna painted on an icon, the large hat she was wearing her nimbus.

And here was one of _him_, drawn sitting devil-may-care, fag in hand at a cafe table. Only, at a cafe he had never in his memory attended upon, a glint in his eye of near-murder with which the quaint surroundings and Bahian color scheme did not at all reconcile.

And—-most chilling of all-here was Robin, only, drawn holding a small child in his arms moments before laying the babe in its tiny coffin at a funeral. The very look—the very look upon his face from that night Tyr shot Marion at the Nightwatch Windmill. Ox's face was tinted darker, more like the men of this South American country, his beard blacker than in real life.

In an eerie moment of connection, Allen hurriedly re-paged through the last several scenes.

In nearly each of them, somewhere in the background, a man wore some rendering of Robin's face. It was like Eleri was working out a riddle, a puzzle or a code, attempting to solve it through varying iterations. Had he been another man he might have seen it as a type of hysteria, of madness, but he knew his own, repetitive nightmares well enough to recognize it for something else. Something kindred.

He looked up from these pages and stared at Eleri, who, ignorant of the working of his mind, placidly continued to sip her tea.

He decided to start out asking about something small, a half-page sketch of something he _did_ recognize, of scene and character that he knew from personal experience did go together. It was him, laid out upon the Barnsdale davenport, looking sickly, Eleri standing over him. The figure she had sketched of herself had her back to the viewer, one could not see her face or expression.

"Not bein' funny," he looked up, showing her which sketch he was citing, "but this looks almost holy, sacred or summat."

She sighed, her eyebrows raised, mouth closed, clearly uncertain of what sort of review to expect from him, but he had caught her interest, without insulting her decided lack of variety in her subjects.

"But now, here," he went on, turning to the one of him at a Brazilian cafe. "It's impossible. I've never been there."

"I know," she agreed, placidly undisturbed. "But I have. I went there that day to sketch it."

"But why put me there?" he asked. "And looking like that?"

"I didn't!" she protested, shaking her head at the thought. "At least I didn't mean to. None of them start out that way; they're just all studies of places I go to. But all of them turn into the Islands-paintings, seascapes-every sunrise ends up being over Alderney. Every cottage is Mr. Thornton's. Every landscape somewhere on Sark. No matter what I see, what I'm looking at—that's what my hands draw."

He accepted her explanation without commenting on it. No matter what happened in his days, where he was in the world, the majority of the dreams (good or ill) that he could recall took place upon those same islands. "I did not know you were of a talent," he told her, sincerely impressed with her sketchbook, notwithstanding the repetitive subjects it contained.

She ignored his compliment, still troubled by her inability to paint the present. "I took it up again. We were taught it at the convent. What else is there to do here with my time? What else to practice? _Lace_-making? Because I can, you know, _Make. Lace_."

"Is there _nothing_ here for you?" he asked, because he wished to know, more than simply furthering their conversation. "No one in your family that you care for? No beaux?"

She gave a skeptical expression, looking at him out of the side of her eyes. "I am as without meaningful occupation as a lady in a tower. Beaux?" she laughed, ruefully. "In early days I _thought_ myself in love with one of my mother's hired bodyguards, but he was dismissed for the affair. And now I find myself tasked with fending off every new one who's heard the gossip and looking for similar…_benefits_."

His eyebrows drew together. "El—" he began to commiserate with her situation.

"No, don't stop me," she warned him off, what emotion this telling inspired in her not keeping her from sharing it. "I plan to finish." She gave him a tight smile before continuing. It was rueful, and he noticed her hands had stopped over the place where she had laid her napkin on the table. "There was my painting instructor," she told him. "He was a local. Nice at the time. Distracting, sweet. But he was not strong enough to stand up to them. And they made him give me up. Since then I have had nothing here." She looked him straight in the eyes. "Except clothes from Paris, and what suitors my mother wishes to sell me to. I am yet valuable, haven't you heard?" she referenced his earlier comment, "even _you_ say it: who my father is, who my step-father is. They make me something, though even I cannot say for sure what. Miserable, surely. They make me that. Sick of them, of me. That as well. I draw, and the past haunts me. How can it not—-when I am denied any future?"

He looked over to her, uncertain whether he was allowed, yet, to speak.

She moved, then, abruptly (but deliberately) to gather her things. She took the sketchbook from him. He noticed that not only had she placed her napkin upon the table, she had finished her tea.

"Wait," he said, not knowing what to say but not wishing to lose her company just yet. "Surely you need not go straightaway…"

She looked at him somewhat quizzically. "You do not know when I arrived to begin waiting for you."

He gave her a knowing half-grin. "With the sleuthing skills you've shown, and the fact the tea had not yet cooled, I'll say you weren't ten minutes ahead of me."

"That's as may be," she did not disagree with his assumption, a small smile of satisfaction tugging at her mouth, "but it is time for me to go, nonetheless."

The small smile was nice to see, relieving. "Let me walk you some of the way, then."

"Very well," she assented, though surprisingly non-committal for a woman so hell-bent to liaison with him over the last few days.

They walked in the direction of her choosing, but not so briskly that they couldn't look into the occasional shop window, or pause to listen to a busker.

It was not long before he found (without realizing it) that he had offered her his arm. Or perhaps she had taken possession of it. Either way, there was her gloved hand in the crook of his elbow, the light color of her glove's fingers in contrast to the dark cloth crease of his suitcoat. It surprised him that the pressure of her hand upon his arm was so light as to be almost unnoticeable. Certainly it did not in any way impede his walking, or cramp his style.

* * *

><p>After some walking, they came to the window of an auto dealership, and as was his way when around cars, he found himself momentarily slowing their pace.<p>

There were three cars displayed behind the window glass, several small neon signs advertising their makers lit and glowing.

For a moment he was surprised she was indulging him. Then he realized she was looking at them as intently as was he.

"What's the price on that one, over there?" she asked, unable to see the card.

"Why, that's a bloody Tucker '48," he replied with surprise. "Dunno what it's doing down here…" He tried to see the placard, but his eyes (as they were more and more) were beginning to give out on him, becoming less reliable at times and over distances, and he could not make it out.

"Let's go inside," she suggested, shocking him enough that he complied without questioning it, following her into the shop.

Once inside, she walked deliberately over to the card and examined the amount upon it for a long moment, before returning to him and indicating they must go back outside and she must be on her way.

"We part, here," she told him a moment after exiting the auto salesfloor to the street.

"All right, then," he agreed, assuming it was better if she were not seen with him.

But instead of saying farewell, "I want you to buy me a car," she announced, digging around in her purse, her eyes on what was within the handbag.

"You want what?" he asked, certain he had heard wrong.

"I want you to buy me a car, and teach me to drive it."

"Right," he said, but without agreement, his eyes narrowing as he looked at her.

"If I have a car, and I can drive…" she attempted to spell it out for him.

"_That's_ your half-a-plan?" he asked, dizzy at her expectation, "for getting out of here? Have _me_ buy you a car…"

"Don't be silly," she told him, bordering on irritated. "Purchase a car. I've the money to buy it," and before he knew it, she had him bent over—-his back for a clerk's desk—-filling out a cheque to him in the exact amount of the sales ticket on the car, that odd-man-out Tucker '48 she had gone in to see more closely.

"You've a bank, here, right?" she asked, "where you can have this cashed?"

"Have I a bank, she asks," he spoke aloud, dramatically, "the great French detective hasn't deduced if I've a bank. Yes. I've a bank."

"Good," she said. "Will you do it?"

He looked at the draft, at her signature upon it. _Why was her family always so ready to throw money at him?_

She looked at him like she was ready to say something else, bring something to bear on his decision in order to sway him to it.

"And besides that," she began.

"I owe you, I know," he interrupted, wanting to say it before she did.

"What?" she asked, her face looking at little like he had unexpectedly smacked her.

"What you were going to say," he went on, "that I owe you that much."

Still, her jaw cocked as though she were not hearing him rightly. "In what way," she asked for clarification, "are you indebted to me?"

"Well, because I did not come," he spelled it out, a huff in his voice, his delivery rushed.

Her mouth fell open at this, but no sound came out. She simply stared at him. Her jaw worked once or twice as though words might form, but never did. Then she seemed to sigh out all the breath in her lungs, and her shoulders went flat as a tyre.

"But you must understand," he said, "you _must_ believe. If I could have come, I would have come."

She studied on him a moment more. "Yes," she said, finally, looking, her gaze steady upon him. "I think I do."

* * *

><p>"Yes. I will <em>purchase<em> you a car," he answered, snapping the cheque between his two hands, fingers to each of its top corners. "_Yes_, I will teach you to drive it."

Having capped her pen, she smiled, thrusting it and her chequebook back into her pocketbook.

"Haven't found what I'm looking for, yet," he told her, though he had not referenced his true reason for coming to Brazil to her before. "…And we must keep busy in the meanwhile, so, lessons it shall be," he added, thinking of her sketchbook—of whether Robin's face would make its way into a future study of _this_ moment, who in the crowd on the street his features would over-write in her mind.

**...TBC...**

* * *

><p><strong>AN:** Hanging out on Tumblr some at nettlestonenell and probably will be posting when I've updated, there. Fanfiction sending updates is sometimes unreliable of late.


	18. Chapter 15 - Two Bottles of Wine

**GUERNSEY - Barnsdale – 1943 – **"Eleri," Marion Nighten said from her position pruning a rose in the hothouse adjacent to the natatorium, "if you proceed to skulk about and sneak up on me yet again, surprising the wits out of me, I shall not be responsible for sinking these shears into whatever soft flesh of yours they might lodge well inside."

"Lady Marion, forgive me."

Marion looked wary, but not entirely disagreeable. "You are as bad as your father's driver when it comes to playing padfoot."

"Padfoot, my lady?"

"A goblin," Marion clipped at another stem, "'_un lutin'_-a spectral creature; a girl following you without wanting you to know about it."

"Sorry."

"Forgiven," Marion absolved her, setting into a chat, her tone that of a somewhat taxed-by-an-overeager-younger-sibling-sister. Even so, it was not without good humour. "Is it your intent to shadow my comings and goings from now until I leave this earth?" Eleri could not have known it, but it was tone that sounded very much of Clem Nighten, Marion's older brother, addressing his sister about any number of things: equal parts impatience and submerged joviality.

"Well, no," Eleri answered. "I mean yes. I mean—I don't know." She almost threw up her hands. "There is nothing to do here."

"Hmm," said Marion, still paying more attention to the flowering plant in front of her than the girl. "I do not think the staff would much agree with you."

"No, of course," Eleri verbally back-tracked. "I mean only that the staff arrange for so many of our needs."

"And you are not so accustomed?"

"No," Eleri shook her head. "At the convent we were expected to have a hand in nearly every task, no matter how humble."

Marion paused, held back a sigh. "Then I greatly envy you."

"Envy?" the younger girl almost squeaked in disbelief. "_Me_?"

"For I have lived quite the opposite," Marion told her. "I was taught little if anything about such tasks. For example; any work with the needle was meant for display and decoration alone. The tasks of a household were expected only to be _managed_ by a Lady—never worked at by her."

Eleri considered this, held her hand out as if to touch one of the plant's leaves. At a warning look from Marion, still at her task of pruning it, her concentration seemingly intent, Eleri withdrew the hand back, the leaf untouched. "Whatever did you find to do with your days?"

"Do not misunderstand," Marion warned. "Commanding a household and its staff is hardly simple. But my mother handled that. As for me? I pursued things _I_ enjoyed: riding, reading-educating myself."

Here it was Eleri's turn to become intent, considering Marion's words. "I am not one for much riding, I think. As for reading, I shall look to see if you've any novels in French. As for education, I completed lessons at the convent. In the years to come, I was meant to help with lessons for the younger girls." She ended with some note of pride in her delivery of such news.

Marion stood back and appraised her work on the rose. "An education is never complete, Eleri," she said, holding the shears in her hand and resting her chin upon that hand's knuckles, its elbow cupped in her other hand. "Not as long as there are things on earth of which you are ignorant. Take this rose, for instance…" she gestured at it with a careless wave of her shear-holding hand.

"But I do not have any interest in tending hothouse flowers—" Not wishing for a gardening lesson, Eleri expressed confusion and narrowly held in a pout of disgust.

"You may well not," Marion counseled, "but learning the ways and needs of a rose may one day prove to you an invaluable piece of knowledge."

Eleri's face took on a look of such skepticism, had Marion not known her better she would have laughed aloud in the wake of it.

"Roses have been grown for over five-thousand years, after all," Marion continued, stifling her desire to snicker at her quickly-sour companion. "They might well have something to teach you…"

At this, Eleri's eyebrow came up. Being in Lady Marion's company, after all, was far better than being alone. Even _if_ she wanted to talk about something as dull as flowers.

"The bloom of a rose is not merely beautiful, it is also edible," Marion continued on. "_These_ taste of green apples. And should you need it, rose hips provide more Vitamin C than any other fruit or veg."

Eleri did not even wait for it to sink in. "But Lady Marion," she protested, "I can't really see anyone _wanting_ to eat a rose. I mean, they're very _pretty_…"

"Then you have not been seeing Guernsey with _your_ eyes, Eleri," said Marion, a sharp edge entering her until-now tolerant tone. "_Stop_," she nearly barked, punctuating the command by heavily setting down the pruning shears upon the wooden potting table in front of her, "looking through the goggles of Lieutenant Geis—or of your father. Guernsey is hungry," she turned her full attention toward Eleri, eye to eye. "We are well-kept here, but not so for the rest of the island."

Marion's face had altered, its soft lines became harder, her eyes more direct. But just as quickly, it reverted to as it had been before and she hurried on, as though she ought not have spoken so forthrightly. Her tone became light, unimportant. "Learning to tend a rose—one of the more difficult to properly cultivate flowers—will teach you skills for nurturing more practical plants, should the need arise."

Eleri, unused to anything so close to anger showing up in Marion's demeanor could hardly track what had just passed in the last few seconds. All her mind could do was sort out what had been said—not examine in what way it had been given voice. "So you work with the roses yourself to learn something of husbandry?"

Marion laughed, again, light and inconsequential. "I work with the roses, and see to the like, to have something to _do_, Eleri. Nothing helpful comes from idleness. Only, too much self-reflection, and too little thought for others." She lifted and replaced the pot of the original rose and took up another to tend.

"The Sisters taught us embroidery," Eleri shared, in a considered tone. "And lace-making. And I can milk a cow."

"Can you?"

"I'd rather not _have_ to, mind you. But I can."

At this they shared a laugh.

"And what of deportment, then?" Marion asked when their laughter had passed. "Of how to comport oneself when in company?"

"We were not much instructed upon…"

"The opposite sex?"

Eleri shook her head in the negative, lowered her eyes. "There was only an aged gardener at the Convent. We were never in the company of other men, save the rare times someone in our families might visit."

"Yes, I see," Marion agreed with her, appraising her own work on the plant. She slid a look at Eleri out of the corner of one of her eyes. "Or a Communist revolutionary break into the larder?"

Eleri blushed fiercely with surprise. She had not expected Lady Marion to know about that.

"Forgive me," Marion said, her voice more than half-way to jolly. "I am very rude to bring up another girl's love affairs."

But though she was surprised, Eleri was too delighted with Marion knowing anything about her to mind. "Teach me something, then," she asked, something quick and voracious snapping into her eyes. Marion had her full attention, now. "Something of men."

"Very well, Fraulein," Marion considered, laying down the shears and brushing off her hands against the protective pinafore she was wearing. "'Something' of men…"

* * *

><p><strong>BRASIL, City of Salvador da Bahia –<strong> **1954** **– **"What have you there?" Eleri Vaiser asked when Allen Dale showed up at the appointed place with her new car. He was carrying a package wrapped in twine, as though a recent purchase from a store.

"The necessities, if we are to take on the task you have appointed to us."

He handed her the package, and she placed it on the car's bonnet and opened it. Two lovely, kidskin driving gloves, camel-colored, and moccasins to boot. "They are lovely," she told him. "But shoes? What's wrong with _my_ shoes?" She looked down at the fashionable pumps she had chosen to wear out for the day.

"Those?" he asked, scoffing. "Can't wear _those_, Ellie." He had his arms about her and was expertly bundling her into the passenger seat, though she had expected to take the wheel.

"What are you doing?"

"Can't let you take over 'til we're clear of town," he announced. "How's your countryside Portuguese?"

"Very well, thank you," she replied, turning over the soft, flexible flats he had bought for her in her hands. "Why these, again?"

"D'ye see that there?" he pointed out the clutch. "Driving takes strength and control." He extended his other hand toward her leg, where she had pulled it up and settled it, knee bent, calf against the seat cushion upholstery between them, her pump and the foot within it almost back to her bum so that she might change her shoe without contending with the dashboard.

"High heels are unstable," he told her. "You need a _solid_ foundation, nothing to get in your way." The fingers in his hand not commanding the steering wheel had splayed out over her leg and for a moment she thought he would reach out and touch it (and she would not have minded), but instead he held them there for a moment, before clenching them shut into a fist and give said fist two short shakes in mid-air, as though drawing some thought to a close. "Nothing to get in your way," he said.

* * *

><p>They found a place that he felt satisfied was lone enough out in the Brazilian countryside, and he let her take the wheel of her car.<p>

She found she did not know if she truly needed the gloves in order to manipulate the large steering wheel—but that she _certainly_ needed the stability of the moccasin flats in order to bend the various pedals to her will.

"Not bad," he had told her of their first trip out. "Though you are faster than is good for you."

At this they had laughed, though it was not particularly funny. She had bought them the makings of a South American picnic when she was on her way to meet with him, and when the time seemed right they parked the Tucker and ate a lunch somewhere, on the land of someone they did not know, under a tree they did not own, whose shade they had no particular right to.

"Do you find you like it here?" she asked, meaning the country of Brazil in general.

"Suppose," he replied, mouth full of bread.

"Well enough to think about staying on?"

He noticed the sunlight behind her, coming through the edges of her light shirtwaist, giving her a sort of spark to her outline where she sat with her back to the light, across from where he sat with his back to the tree, leaning against its trunk, hand propped up on his raised knee.

"Nah. Not that well," he told her, and it was their first conversation (albeit a brief one) addressing what might be the plausible length of his stay.

Wanting to distract her from too many questions about the whys of his trip here, he quickly settled on another topic.

"And what did _you_ do," he asked her, as he opened another bottle for her to drink, "after the liberation?" He had been able to uncover surprisingly little about what had happened to her after his very public calling-out by her father as he was being taken away. Allen, himself, had not been long on the islands following that.

She looked at him probingly, as though she did not understand there being any real question about it, "Why, I read the books."

"Really?" he asked, astounded. "No foolin'." _Well whaddya know about that?_

"Yes," she reiterated, nodding her head. "Every word."

"Every word," he marveled, never having believed that anything he told Eleri Vaiser would have been truly taken to heart. "That must've taken you—"

But she did not let him finish. "What did you do with that Barnsdale wine? That you had 'put away' in the cellar, and then liberated?" she asked, cutting him off, pointing at him with the neck of her bottle across the expanse of the picnic that separated them. "Whom did you find to share it with? Without the soldiers-who would not have wanted to celebrate their _defeat_—who was left to drink with you?"

He gave her a look. It lasted only about the bat of an eyelash, but that was long enough for him to take in her frame of mind when making such an enquiry. It was not a question he had expected. He smiled easily. Those bottles of Nighten wine.

"Ah, good wine, El'ri," he motioned a toast with his hand, which held a sandwich rather than a glass. "Nary a bloke on Sark gonna turn down a chap willing to stand them a drink." He waited to see if she would again take the conversation back, to see if his throwaway non-answer would stand.

* * *

><p><strong>SARK<strong> **– La Salle's tenement – May 1945 – Hours to Liberation - **Allen walked past the farmhouse's near barnyard, ever aware of the contents of Wills' shit shack at present. After installing Kommandant within it, the gang'd dropped the door on him; manure that had been piled atop that flap ensuring that when the other Tommies arrived (in a day, perhaps two) to enforce the accepted Jerry surrender of Sark, he'd have to be spaded out of it.

Vaiser had probably not even sussed out that he had been played for a fool, yet. Certainly no curses could be heard coming from Wills' concealed ventilation piping.

He had been its tenant for less than an overnight.

All standard operating procedure upon the farm, as far as the unit was concerned, no longer existed. All the painstaking steps they had taken and religiously kept-to for the sake of their safety under Occupation had burnt off, like morning mist on a spring meadow. No more need to banish excess unit members to be housed and kept at the mines, no more need for Djak to keep herself quiet and indoors in daylight hours.

Jerry might yet lay official claim to this island, but the German influence over it was one of name only.

"What, ho, Wills?" Allen called as he found his comrade close to the bath house.

"Allen," Wills replied, and at Allen's gesture to enter the privacy of the small shed reserved for clothes and body washing, walked through the open doorway, which Allen shut behind them.

"For Djak," Allen said, pulling fabric out from where it had been stashed within his buttoned-up shirt.

"Djak?" Wills asked skeptically. "Why should she want a frock? _Now_?"

"Don't be an idiot," Allen nearly clapped his mate upside the head. "You give it 'her."

"Me? _Why_? A frock?"

"Because she might like to have a little summat pretty after years of wearing men's old clothes."

Wills' eyes widened, as if taking in the thought. "Perhaps she likes men's clothes."

"Well, that is for her to decide," Allen replied. "A decision which cannot be made unless she's given the choice."

"And why me?" Willis asked, quickly adding with a tone of suspicion, "where did you get this?"

"Scrounged it from Fraulein Vaiser's wardrobe, what were left of it."

"You went to see her?" concern gathered Wills' brows together.

"Had business there."

"What sort?" And now the suspicion was back.

Allen shrugged. "What sort do you expect?" Wills was not in command. The business of moving Eleri Vaiser from Barnsdale to Thornton's cottage was hardly the business of the unit, and yes, his stepping away from his post had lost them Vaiser—but only temporarily. Bygones.

"I don't know," Wills reliably confessed to Allen's calling his bluff. "I don't think like you."

"Here, here," said Allen, feeling he'd covered his tracks well enough with a nonsensical and un-answered argument.

"Don't let Mitch know," Wills cautioned, not apprehending his valid question had been spun rather than answered. "That you were pinching from Barnsdale."

"He's about to find out, whether he approves or not…" Allen now withdrew two bottles from a similar hiding place.

Seeing this, Wills broke into a grin, caught himself looking down to the frock still lying in his lost-for-action hands. "If it's Fraulein Vaiser's, how's it gonna fit Djak?"

"Like a frock that's too big for her, Clod. She's got all Madame La Salle's needles, hasn't she? It'll fit however she chooses to tailor it. She's been wearing _your_ shirt for how long now? And whose trousers—Dick's? You never worried about _their_ fitting."

"No," Wills agreed. "I never did…perhaps she can fashion the extra fabric of the length into a headcovering. She told me once the women of her people wear those."

"Nah," Allen disagreed. "'think 'tis only the married ladies."

"Yes. No, I think you are right," Wills agreed, turning momentarily reflective. "Do you suppose she'll stay here? That she will be allowed to stay on the island?"

Allen could hardly take his eyes off his twin bottles, where they sat upon the wash basin stand. "If Stephen has anything to say about it—and Lords 'So On' and 'So Forth' upstairs. They'll square it for you, Wills." He took his hands and tipped back each bottle by their neck in order to better see them in the dim light. "No one's shipping our Djak anywhere she doesn't want to be. Not ever again."

"Since when," came a jolly voice through the door, "do you scabby twosome go bog together?"

The door creaked open and John stepped through. "What news?" he asked Allen, with a jerk of his chin.

* * *

><p>Allen managed to delay a full review of the most up-to-date information until he was indoors among Stephen and Djak in the small parlor, Mitch listening in (no doubt) from his self-appointed position at Robin's door upstairs.<p>

"News first?" Allen asked, assuming it was his information that was most sought-after.

"Vote first," Johnson apprised him, typically terse.

"Vote?"

"Perhaps not so much a vote, as informing you of a vote already taken," Wills announced.

"And wot may I ask were we voting about?"

"Robin," replied Djak, the 'r' of the name rolling around upon her Gypsy tongue.

"And where did said vote stand?"

"One for," Wills relayed, "two against. Stephen abstaining, Robin unable to cast."

"And Djak?" Allen asked, looking at the Gypsy girl. "Where stands she?"

"Djak canna vote, Dale," John pointed out. "She's not of the unit."

"You would let Stephen vote," Allen began, his internal delight over the two bottles, their glass cool against the skin where he had again hidden them within his shirt making him feel like he was already at a party, "did he not always abstain—let her have Royston's vote. She's twice more reasonable than he ever was. Let her have Carter's vote—she's thrice more pleasant than _he_ ever was." He came back at them with bandying words more rooted in his anticipation of the bottle he had snatched than of considered care about the subject at hand. _The island was to be liberated: them rescued. What could any longer need them to be so grave?_

"'Tis Robin, Allen," Wills prompted.

"And the vote?" Allen asked, wondering what Wills had done with the frock he had only so recently been holding.

"One for medick-ing him. Two against."

"So John is for, and you and Mitch opposed. John _is_ official medic, lest we forget."

"I do not think La Salle will agree—" John announced. "I know he's likely a tonic on hand to do the job, but still."

"A tonic to muddle a mind?" Stephen asked, shaking his head. "As I have admitted in past, so I do. But that was shared in the confidence of believing that we might someday have made use of it in regard to the enemy—not in regard to one of our _friends_. And an ill one, at that."

"How long does it last?" Allen asked, imagining a glass in hand already, the moisture of the wine needing to be wiped away from his mouth.

"A local plant, its effects can last hours, if a man is given enough. Perhaps a few days."

"And you think to give it him…"

John finished Allen's thought. "Not until we see them come with our own eyes. But Mitch will not agree."

"_Aye_, he will," Allen replied, his voice rising in volume for Mitch's particular benefit. "He will at that, for, _Stephen_—" and here he pretended to only be addressing their host, but his volume remained robust, carrying his voice easily up the stair to Mitch's seat. "The men coming. If they believe Ox can so much as string two words together coherently they will _not_ let him rest. What is more, they will not move him or get him to hospital proper. Nursing 'tis not their speciality. They will arrive needing information like these islands need provisions. They will take Robin from us without so much as a by your leave and they will keep him in their clutches until he _cannot_ speak. I'll not vote in favor of that, and those who have, ought be ashamed for doing so. Muddle his mind to save his life, _I_ say." At this, he dramatically withdrew the bottles from his shirt and plunked them as noisily as possible upon the nearby sidetable as though illustrating the ending period to his speech.

A rush of feet could be heard descending the stair.

"Very well! Very well!" came the voice of Mitch, ever fearing anyone else that might look as though they cared more for Robin than did he. "It is true. It is true. Find the plant, Stephen. I will give it him when needed—_but__ not before_. Whatever it takes to get him home, and into proper care. I—" His eyes came to rest upon the bottles Allen had produced. "What is this?" Mitch asked, suddenly and wholly distracted. Without picking one up, he looked closely at the label, coming at the bottle of wine as though it were a live potato masher, arrived in Stephen's small parlor. He spluttered. "This is from Barns—"

Allen shrugged, having expected some such protest. "Then it is Marion's," he said, as if that precluded his having nicked it. Perhaps he said the lady's name more quietly than one might, knowing whom the farmhouse contained.

"Robin's by rights," Mitch disagreed.

"And you think he would deny us a bit o' celebration?"

"Well, no," Mitch allowed, looking at the label more closely. "Bless me, but you picked well. Do you—do you _know_ from wines?"

Allen shrugged. "Only wot's best to pinch and resell, based on where it's positioned in the cellar, the relative scarcity of it in said cellar and the fact it's not a local vintner. Reckoned that would be better than for just cookin'."

"I'll say," said Mitch, wholly impressed by the choice if not by the theft. "Though _your_ peasant palette will know no differently."

For the moment Robin had been sorted. For a moment they felt like a unit again, Mitch nagging at Allen, Allen bringing them all gifts he had neither bought nor earned. They were, more or less, all together—though for how much longer, none of them knew. Hours, most likely—before the outside world showed up, before responsibility and authority and expectation re-entered their sphere.

They had been an island for years. They had been a brotherhood for longer, and had become an extended family along the way. Liberation was something to celebrate, Christmas about to arrive-but like winter solstice, it also signaled change. And the intoxicating freedom they had found living in secret under Jerry rule was about to end, and to turn into something none of them could truly prognosticate.

Just as they had before embarking upon their disastrous trip to France whose return had found them stranded here, a drink (or four) seemed the best way to herald such uncertainty, the only worthy salute to what had been and what might be to come.

"Cups!" shouted Allen, smacking his hands together with relish.

"Cups!" chanted the others, "Cups! Cups! Cups!"

* * *

><p>Eleri said nothing to his general and inspecific reply, only eventually set to work on peeling a piece of local fruit with a knife she had gotten from him. She did not seem interested in moving the conversation any further along from where he had left it: that no Sarkee existed who would turn away a drink.<p>

He took his napkin and began tidying himself, and his place on the blanket on which they sat, up.

"There were many questions, of course," she said rather abruptly as he placed his own empty bottle back in the picnic hamper.

He shot a look up at her, almost startled by the sudden sound of her voice.

"By the British Navy. Many questions. They asked them over and over. Days, nights. Always the same things. I started to think it didn't matter how I answered them or in what language. Still, they asked. Where was _this_ person, how did _they_ get off the island? Did _I_ know a way to be smuggled off the island? Where lay _my_ loyalties? Would I like to see my father? What of von Bachmeier? Was I close with him? You would have thought the entire Occupation was my own idea."

His throat threatened to close up. So Clem Nighten and his lot _had_ gotten to her. "But were they good to you?" he asked. "Were they _gentlemen_?"

She looked at him, but did not answer.

She swallowed down the bite of fruit she had taken. She took her thumb and napkin and began to polish away the spots upon the knife she had pared it with.

"I was never injured, if that is your question. They asked repeatedly about Sir Edward, and his death—about, about…about _her_." And here she came to a verbal stop. For a moment she even ceased breathing.

When her breath returned to her, she was looking at him, the sun low behind her. He could almost not bear to hold her gaze, so penetrating the light to her back.

"But I never told them about you. Not once. Not once did I speak your name. I didn't want them to know, you see. Didn't want them to know you were still on the islands, that you had worked for my father. I didn't want them to drag you in there—where they had me. I didn't like the idea of you being…hurt. Until you gave them their answers. I had seen other men…being brought in for questioning. Seen what they looked of upon release. So I didn't give them your name. I only ever talked about my father's driver, who was so below my notice I didn't know his name. Didn't know a fact about him."

His eyes were squinting in the light. "Even though you were angry with me," he said.

"Thank you for the gloves and shoes," she said, evenly, not acknowledging his comment as true or false. "And for the lesson."

"But it is time to go," he added, intuiting her statement as a desire to depart.

"For today," she agreed.

Silence reigned among them as they folded up what needed to be folded and replaced picnic items and empty bottles into the hamper. Even as he carried it to the Tucker neither spoke further.

He stowed the hamper in the boot, and she walked to take her place behind the wheel—she would drive them closer to town before yielding the wheel to him until another lesson on another day.

He moved to open the driver's side door for her, one of many doors he'd opened for her in the past as her father's man.

When she had walked down the long and heavy expanse of it and was just about to sit, she was right beside him—only the car door between them, its window rolled down.

"Thank you, Fraulein," he told her, his head nodding with other words not then speakable between them.

_Thank you_. Even though he knew, from his standpoint, that what she had done had not mattered to his situation in life. _She_ could not know that. Had not known it when she had intended to shield him from harm. The fact he had not needed her protection did not diminish her action in any way. Her nerve, thinking to outwit the British Navy, to withhold something they would have wanted. Her nerve, and in her way, her bravery.

"It's Eleri," she said in reply to him. "Just 'Eleri' will do nicely."

**…TBC…**


	19. Chapter 16 - Ticket's Bought

**GUERNSEY – Barnsdale – 1943 -** The instant Gisbonnhoffer and his man Thered departed-were past the stone posts of the entry gate-Eleri Vaiser ran from where she had been forcibly held within Barnsdale House toward the park and the blaze that had been set in the horsebarn. She sped like a banshee over the ground, not quite touching it in her speed, wanting to scream, wanting to make a cry of warning, or a noise that she was coming: anything to herald her arrival and inform those she was trying to reach. But her voice made no sound.

She almost fell over once she reached the area beside the burning barn, the harsh, brilliant light from the fire distracting from the necessity of watching one's step on the uneven, hoof-pocked earth. There was a civilian Island Constable whose name she did not know but whose uniform she recognized, standing over Sir Edward.

She did not know how she could be sure-certainly she was not close enough-but she knew: the _remains_ of Sir Edward.

"What of Lady Marion?" she demanded of the constable, as she sank to her knees near Lord Nighten's shoulder.

"She has run off, Miss," the constable told her. "I could not persuade her to return to the house."

Eleri took a deep breath. She was so far out of her depth in this moment. _Lady Marion, the most amazing person she had ever met, had run away? Lady Marion who managed the household, who tended her father—Lady Marion had run away? What had Herr Geis done to her? Where could she—where would she—have gone at such an hour? Lady Marion's father, here. Dead. _

_Abandoned._

Dead bodies Eleri had spent little-enough time in the company of. She looked down upon him. He was a kind—if dotty—soul, who had never a truly cross word in him in the time she had been staying at his home. He should not be left here out upon the stableyard grass.

It was an odd sensation: the coolness of the ground, of Sir Edward's skin, in contrast to the fire burning, crackling so nearby as it consumed the wooden portions of the outbuilding, roof and timber; blackened the white-washed rock of its walls.

She decided. If Lady Marion could not face what had to be done, what came next, then _she_ would. _For _her. "We must move him," she said, looking up at the constable. "He must not be left _here_."

The constable, knowing enough of what was good for him to recognize her as the daughter of the Alderney Kommandant, went down on one knee at her directive, moving to sling what was left of Sir Edward over his shoulder and carry him, inelegantly, toward the house.

"No!" Eleri cried. "Not like that! There is time. We must see it done properly. You stay here with him. Stay here in case Lady Marion returns." (_Please God, have her return and sort this_.) "I shall fetch Clun and other staff, and see him carried home upon a proper plank—or if none can be found, the large panel shield hanging in the lavender drawing room." Her mind was suddenly a-swirl with what must be done.

Before she stood to go and collect Clun, she saw where Sir Edward's hand had fallen away from his chest where the other one rested. It looked so forlorn, so useless—like a marionette's with a loose, ineffectual string. She grabbed it and went to place it in the side pocket of his dressing gown. The familiar pocket accepted its owner's hand easily enough, but in the doing of it she felt the crunch of paper within.

She slid out the paper it held, but unable to read it in the median light of the blaze and the darkness, slipped it into her own pocket for safe-keeping before heading back to the house and to the assistance she needed (likely asleep in ignorance) within it.

* * *

><p><strong>BRASIL -<strong> **Salvador de Bahia - Hotel de Corazon – **Allen Dale arrived back to his hotel, only to find the room he was letting already occupied. His visitor was unexpected, but he had noted as he passed the concierge desk that the man there both caught and held his gaze a bit longer than usual. This had left him fairly certain something—or some_one_—was waiting for him within.

Even so, he very normally and calmly unlocked the door of his room and stepped inside. There was the bed (larger than it needed to be for one man), there the chair and smaller round table to the side to support the paraphernalia for either drinking or correspondence as one sat in view of the large balcony and its French doors. Beyond the chair there was the en suite sink and loo (extra on the eventual bill), bath shared down the corridor. A private wireless in one corner (billed weekly), a too-large mirror over a too-small bureau. Hat stand by the door.

"Wotcher doing _here_?" he asked, finding Eleri Vaiser like a brunet Goldilocks standing beside the bed, the valise he traveled with opened upon the once-tidy sheets there and half-rifled through. Her large sun hat lay upon the bed as though she were a causal, bona fide caller.

"Looking to see if you have a dinner jacket," she told him, looking up, uncaring as a cat, ignorant of the fact it was prying into things well outside its actual domain.

"A _dinner_ jacket?" he asked, incredulously, telling his 'on alert' heart to fall back into a manageable rhythm at finding only Eleri and not some other threat.

He now saw her gloves, also, atop the brim of her cast-off hat. And a scarf alongside it. She had not taken long in making the room hers.

In her act of snooping she had not even seen any reason to be ready to flee at a moment's notice. She behaved every bit as though she had been invited and expected. "My mother has sent you an invitation to dinner," she asked him. "Yes?"

V_ery well, if that's how they were to play it_.

He nonchalantly removed his Panama hat and placed it atop the wooden hat stand, just as he would have done had she not been there. Then he withdrew the post he had just received from the desk downstairs out of his suit coat and quick-thumbed through the folded messages on hotel stationery to the lone envelope. "Yes. If your mother is now going by the public name of _Edythe Merker_." It was a posh bit of stationery. He tore the flap off the envelope, rather more concerned with dispatch than tidiness. Invitation to a dinner party. Cocktails at thus and such a time, dinner to be served at a late hour, address and hostess' name. He flicked his eyes up and away from the invitation text. "How'd you get up here?"

Eleri looked more of a woman placidly unpacking her husband's things than a cat burglar. "The concierge had no trouble being convinced to let me in," she shrugged.

"The _concierge_," he asked, "wot?"

"I spun him a story," she claimed, throwing his old line back at him.

"You did wot?"

"Don't be ridiculous," she followed up. "_Me_. Wanting to be let up into your rooms? What do _you_ think a concierge is going to think? Why do you think a concierge is going to care? The man is not on your payroll."

"Of a certain he is not _anymore_," Allen threatened, exasperated. "Letting strange women up to rifle through my personal belongings. You could have been anyone."

"Anyone willing to pay him more than did you, _ob_viously," she announced in rejoinder.

He was about to splutter something in reply when she cut short her own sentence and asked, "Why do you have a handgun?"

She extended her open palm holding a trio of bullets she had removed from among the additional ammunition he had left in his valise.

Without answering right away, he moved to her side at the bed, shouldering to get around her, and began to replace his things within the valise.

"Told you," he rolled his fingertips atop the bullets she held in her palm and retook possession of them, dropping them into the breastpocket of his shirt, where they rested, weighty and cold, over his heart. "I was fingered as your father's driver."

She had not surrendered or modified her position standing in front of his valise as though she possessed it. "No you didn't," she called him out. "_I_ talk. You don't tell me anything."

He stretched his hands out toward several poorly folded maps he had been keeping in the bottom of the valise. Moved to replace them. "Don't I?"

She was looking full at him, watching him as he re-packed his bag, taking in his profile. He was eyes-on-the-task.

"I don't know if you're married," she said, "if you have children—even, what you've been doing since the war."

"Well, I'm not," he said, his hands stopping in their work, his eyes still down, inside the valise, catching the title of one of the maps: New York City subway lines. "_Married_." He took the map and with the tip of his forefinger, flipped it over onto its back. "I was."

"What happened?" she asked in perfectly natural follow-up. Interest was evident in her voice.

He found both his hands holding on to either opening of valise, the parted zipper track there cold and sharp against his palms. "My wife found she did not want to be married to a coward and a collaborator."

In a few short moves he finished re-packing what belonged in the bag. And went to re-stow it with a toss under the bed.

Eleri still had not given an inch in where she stood beside the bed. She turned, swiveling herself into a seated position, so that she could face him. He watched the mattress rebound in accepting her weight, the sheets flutter slightly at the disturbance in the air, and resettle, mussed. She propitiously avoided (of course, they were hers, she would not wish them squashed) landing upon her hat and other accessories.

"Was she gentle, then?" she asked, raising her brows and looking up at him, prompting. "Was she kind?"

"Wot?" he asked, this question as much a non-sequitur to him as had been her occupying his room unexpectedly.

"That's what you told me men wanted," she replied, and looking at her he thought he saw something of the old Eleri who fell in love at the drop of a hat and was at least as in love with love as with any man she'd ever met.

"Yeah, well," he brushed it off, "guess that's not what I was looking for when I found Florinda."

He removed his suitcoat, went to hang it up by his hat. Obviously Eleri was not going away anytime soon (not under her own power), so he might as well wait it out. He carried his post over to the smaller round table.

"And now?" she asked from behind him, on the bed.

_Criminey, if the concierge only knew what a chatty tryst companion Eleri would make surely he would have conspired in Allen's favor and detained her downstairs._

"Now?" he scoffed. "Now I bloody well know better, don't I?" he declared, but even he could not say whether he knew better, in that one ought not marry—or only in that one ought perhaps seek out those things he had carelessly listed for Eleri those years ago.

_Gentleness, kindness_. Things he abruptly realized this moment could use. "Don't listen to me, Eleri," he threw over his shoulder as he sank into the chair, its wooden legs skidding back an inch on the uncarpeted floor. "I am no philosopher. Not then, not now."

* * *

><p>The hotel's upper floors were quite warm, and after a moment Eleri stood and walked toward the French doors of the balcony, opening them in the hopes of catching something of a breeze off the bay, two blocks distant.<p>

"Undo your collar and cuffs," she instructed him. "You are turning dreadfully pink. Shall I ring to see if they've any ice?"

With some degree of annoyance (he was not a child, after all), he began to do as she suggested, peeling back his shirtsleeves into cuffs, unbuttoning his shirt until several inches of ribbed undershirt was visible, pulling out its tail from his trousers. "No ice," he told her, "I've naught to drink up here."

She looked down at him on her way crossing the room away from the French doors. He ran his hand through his hair. With his collar open and his shirt cuffed he did feel better. A slight breeze had begun to stir the light curtains at the balcony doors.

He saw Eleri reach for her gloves.

"She was a Yank," he said, surprising himself by actively trying to delay her exit. "I went over there after the war," he straddled his forehead with his hand, fingertip and thumb tip each to its own temple, "stayed with my aged auntie. Florinda was a dancer. Auntie, costume mistress."

Down went the hat. It had no weight, and the bed was not a hard surface, but if it had been so it would have made a resounding thud. "You do not live in Guernsey!"

"Naw," he admitted, going on. "Not since '45. Got out, right after liberation."

"And what, then, is your present occupation?" she asked, surprised confusion about her face. She was no longer about to leave.

"Presently?" he asked rhetorically. "I am a man of no occupation."

Her eyes narrowed, her mouth opened as though she could now taste something in the air. "And why come _here_, to Carnaval?"

And there it was: the real question. The answer that would ultimately answer all the others: the kernel of his identity, and the games that had been played with it since a certain disastrous plane crash pre-war.

"I'm at looking for someone from the war," he told her.

"Looking for someone?" her question was wary, distrustful at the vague use of 'someone'. "An old lover?"

"No, a woman—" he quickly cut in. "A _person_, a very good person." He increased the intensity of their eye contact, letting his brows raise as if to tentatively ask, 'trust me on this one?' "I am looking for someone who hurt her."

Eleri's head did a long, slow motion nod, as if she were calculating furiously during its descent. "There are certainly enough Germans here who fit _that_ description."

He nodded.

She looked at him, and though she did not say it, he could read it in her face: _This is why you are here, __not__ Carnaval. This is why the handgun._ At this point he did not doubt she knew something of his meetings with contacts (though until now she had clearly not understood the nature of them), knew the name he traveled under (the one upon his present passport) was an inverted version of the one she had known him as.

"That day, in the taverna. You _wanted_ me to know where von Bachmeier was. Wanted to know that information, didn't you?"

"Myself, and a thousand others," he confessed.

She looked studious for a moment, then took a lipstick and powder out of her pocketbook and went to the mirror for a touch-up.

He watched her careful, practiced movements, the expedience with which she performed the task. The way in which she seemed, very much, like she belonged in this room. In which she seemed to possess both air and area about her.

"Where did you live?" she asked as she snapped the powder compact closed. "What sort of home did you make with her? Did you have a patch to call your own?" Down swirled the lipstick back into the tube. "Dogs, maybe? Chickens?" Surveying herself once again in the glass, she tugged at the collar-less neckline of her frock, popping off two buttons, the noise of which skittered upon the bare floor.

"No," he shook his head, caught off-guard by the change in topic, though not minding it. "We let a tight apartment in a crowded city."

"Oh," she replied, "I am so weary of apartments, no matter how luxurious."

He recalled the apartment address on the invitation. "Why would _your_ mother invite me to a dinner party?"

Eleri shrugged as she went to gather her hat and things. When she had them, the bed finally empty of both valise and her accoutrements, it was a far from tidy surface, and rather looked more like someone had been rolling about upon it, in a particularly unrestful nap.

"She's aware you are only here for a limited visit, that you were my father's driver during the Occupation. With that in mind she has agreed to tolerate _me_ for that _limited_ time."

"And you didn't flambe another of her gowns? Attempt a blackmail of more hollow threats?"

"No. She is still smarting from the last time. And trying to decide if she believes I hold dangerous information against her. Or she would not have so agreed at all."

"Even so," he told her, standing to hold the door and let her out. "You'd do best not to break into my rooms, here. To come and visit them alone."

She turned back, half-way through the door way. "You seem very fixated of late on safeguarding something you _think_ is mine, that _I_ only wish to ruin."

"Your reputation?" he asked, confused, helpfully motioning to the part of her frock missing two key buttons, now upon his room's floor, trying to point out what was presently partially revealed there. "You _wish_ to ruin it?"

"Like everything else in my life, it's actually _hers_. _I_ mean to be a woman of no reputation. I mean to melt the reputation right off me. And pray she gets more than singed in the process."

Before he could understand what she was doing, she took two fingers of her right hand, flatly pressed them to her newly made-up lips, rather like she were holding a fag within them, and then pressed those same, now smudged, fingers into the open collar of his shirt.

"That will need cleaning," she said of the stain her fingers had left, showing him a folded-over bill and tucking it into his breastpocket, atop the bullets still resting there. "Have the concierge see to it."

She turned away from him and headed toward the stairs to the lobby, just in time to encounter Schmidtznagel, who had only just now caught up with her, quick-stepping on his ascent. She squeezed past him (where he stood taciturn, but still obviously a bit off-balance by this development) so she could lead in their descent.

Schmidtznagel paused a moment before following her, and cast his eye up to the stair's landing to where Allen stood in the doorway of his room: collar stained with Eleri's lipstick, his shirt undone, his cuffs rolled up, his hair askew—and it not yet fully midday.

The bodyguard gave a scowl, but did not make a move toward him, instead turning to go after his just-relocated charge.

_Have__ I a dinner jacket?_ Allen thought, as he moved to close the door, return to the heat and disorder of the unoccupied room. It was hardly the style of clothes one packed when on a mission such as his.

* * *

><p>It was an ugly afternoon. One of annoyance and tension sprung from things over which he understood he had no control, but with which he had not reconciled himself. He could not find Derheim. He'd wasted time enough already in his search (here) for him. It did no good to chase dead leads and continue to throw good money after bad.<p>

He had brought Eleri out, or rather, she was now competent enough behind the wheel to have driven both of them out of the city, into the countryside. He was still keeping the Tucker for her, of course. She was certain that if it were found out that she had bought it she would in some way be swindled out of her possession. So he kept it at his hotel, agreed to travel out in it with her whenever she could manage to slip away. The lessons had been going on for about two weeks, and official Carnaval was getting closer and closer to being fully upon them.

It appeared that the city and its inhabitants enjoyed milking the holiday for all it was worth as long as they could, starting the celebration almost a month before the official date with private parties thrown by individuals, or block- and neighborhood-wide celebrations kicking off in the month prior to the six-day festival proper.

Consequent of this, the city was a tangled knot. Already many residents had not slept properly in days. This fevered pitch, he was reliably told, could be expected to endure until the final party, held the Sunday following official Carnaval's six days.

His mind was made up, though, he would not be staying the intervening time to witness the festival, nor to attend Lady Adalgisa von Bachmeier's dinner party.

When Eleri had come to meet him at the car today he'd let her know—even before they left the city-that his time had come: he would be leaving soon, within the week. His tickets were bought.

She had not really said much in reply, her eyes to the road.

_Well, why should she_, he thought? There was the matter of finding out what to do with the Tucker, of course, when he would no longer be able to safeguard it for her. But other than that, she had known he was only here for a limited time. Hadn't she told her mother as much?

Arriving out in the countryside he'd given her another surprise: a pair of his trousers and a shirt, telling her to duck behind a stand of trees and change into them.

How comically they had fit her when she returned to him where he leaned against the back side of the car.

"Why am I wearing these?" she asked. "Are you teaching me to make left -hand turns on a toll bridge, and it cannot be done properly in a skirt?"

On another day he would have laughed at her harmless bite, but something about today, about his failure on the Derheim front, was still rubbing him raw. Instead of laughing he turned to the boot and opened it, displaying its contents: everything needed to change a tire on one's own.

"You can't be serious," she said to him, pulling at the shirt where it was stuffed into the too-large trouser-waist, which she had attempted to cinch as tightly as possible with his old belt. (He was still wearing his good one.) She had the necessary height for the trouser hem, but not the needed bulk to keep them up unassisted. Her hands held the belt in place, ensuring she did not unexpectedly have the trousers drop onto the ground.

"'Course I'm serious," he replied. "With me gone, and you not able to own up to having bought this car—what's to happen if you find yourself in a spot o' trouble like a flat? Now get down on the ground, and I shall talk you through what needs doing."

She gave him a look that might have withered a weaker man. As it was, it only irritated the rawness of his discontent further.

"Do you not think I don't know what you're likely planning to do?" he snapped down at her, where she had taken a seat upon the ground, as instructed.

She reached up, eyes guileless, for the car jack he was holding down to her. But she would be well-practiced at this by now: hiding herself, her intents. She was Kommandant's Vaiser's daughter, after all.

He found himself quite satisfied when a streak of grease from the device affixed itself to the length of her bared forearm. "If you are planning to run again. If that is your grand scheme—you _cannot_ go without good preparations. The Tucker with a flat is no better'n a heap of metal and leather that will stop you short. No better'n a ball and chain upon your ankle for how slowly you will be able to move, then."

She was nearly grunting with the work of getting the jack to raise the car up off the earth, and she responded with gritted teeth. "If I learn to change a tire properly—_then_ will you stop rowing with yourself?" she asked. "You are a fair beast today. Schmidznagel may well be better company."

"He has more reason to be so," he bit back, squatting down to point out the first of many lug nuts she must remove. His forearms rested on his upper legs, his hands, useless in the moment, flopped down toward the ground.

"You want…money?" she asked, incredulous. "This, right now, it's about money?" she was obviously confused, she turned to look back at him, brought her hand up to her face, not realizing she was smearing more grease with every touch.

When she could see into his eyes, she answered herself. "No, you don't. What is this about? Not the tire—I understand the need for the tire. But this—your humour. Something's wrong."

He let himself rock slightly back on his heels, let his bum hit the ground as he collapsed into a seat on the earth to her back. "Told you I was lookin' for someone."

"Yes, I know."

"Well, he can't be found. Leastways, not by me. Not by the many others I've put pounds in their pockets here to help look."

"Which is why you are leaving."

He pointed toward the other lug nuts, still needing loosened and removed, and she returned to her prescribed task.

"I will leave and follow what information I have wherever it will take me."

"Who is this person? This woman you are doing this for? You say she was not your lover. What, then—your family? How could your tie to her be so strong that you do not feel satisfied by what you have already done? The time and effort you have already expended?"

_How could his tie to her be so strong_. '_That I was the method of her destruction_,' he wanted to say. He thought for a moment. It was the first time since sitting at Carter's Hoboken table he had again been well and truly confronted about who he really was, what he stood for. How easy it had been for the former RAF pilot to slice through all of it, how direct and definitive had been his statement on the matter. Allen wondered if he had it within himself to also dissect the riddle so.

"I was born with the name Allen Dale," he told her. "It was the British Secret Service that suggested I alter it for use in my work."

"The British Secret—"

"Pull it off the axle, there," he instructed her, cutting her off, "My unit had been dropped into France on a standard mission when during our escape a cock-up left us stranded first on Guernsey, before we made our way to Sark."

"You took the job as my father's driver—"

"And I ran a network of informants across three islands."

"She is your informant," Eleri quick-deduced. "What happened to her, your responsibility." He watched the sometimes warring colors in her irises coalesced into glimmering understanding, into what—if he was not kidding himself—was empathy.

He had not planned to confess to this. _What good could come of it, of telling Eleri who he was? Who he always had been?_

She took her hands, and finally realizing their level of grime, wiped them vigorously upon the trousers of his she wore.

"I know where you can find this man," she told him.

"Which man?" he asked, his pulse snapping to attention. "What know you of whom I search?"

"The man once known as _OberSeer_ Jarl Derheim," she answered, clearly knowing more about his present occupation than he had realized.

"Derheim—you _know_ him? Know where he is?"

She nodded. "But he is in the cemetery. For more than one year, but less than two."

"You are certain?"

She nodded again. "Very. His death saved my life."

"Saved you—but how? How could he have been any sort of threat to you: Vaiser's daughter? Von Bachmeier's step-child?"

"You recall I told you about my teacher? My painting master? That we—were involved."

"Yea."

"He had another student. She was jealous. Very jealous of he and I, and he was not the sort of man to take a second woman into his bed when he already had one there. So there was no hope for her passion for him. Not while I stood in her way. And even in the days between my family forcing him to give me up and him doing so, it was said he had no heart for anyone else. Her solution to this was simple: to get me out of her way, and out of his mind. She met with my mother, convinced her I was possibly pregnant with his child. Immediately my mother began scheming what to do with me, how to make the problem go away. Even when it became undeniably obvious that I was not pregnant, still she schemed. I was spoiled goods. She could not be as choosy as she wished. There was an old friend of von Bachmeier's living out on a small ranch up in the mountains, financially very well-off, but needing to keep to himself for reasons left over from the war, and the way in which he entered the country. Of course, in all of this he was also living under an alias. A Dutch name, I think. He had once come to town for a visit and saw one of my paintings. He had liked it very much, and insisted on buying it from my mother, who was frankly horrified to be taking money for anything I had created, but he would have it no other way. When things changed and she was looking for a buyer of _another_ kind, she contacted him and arranged for my engagement to him. Had he lived until the wedding I would have been shipped off to the mountains to live on a remote goat farm, with an elderly infirm husband and no other contacts in the world. _Yes_, I am certain he is dead. I had to wear black to his funeral, and a mourning armband for several months after. It is his death that gave me any small freedom that I now can find. I am not about to forget that."

"But if he is dead, don't you see?" he asked, "I cannot stay here. There are others. Others to seek out on her behalf."

"And your agency, this Secret Service—they would not like you helping the daughter of Heinrik Vaiser, the step-daughter of von Bachmeier," she intuited. "Unless you were doing so at their command?"

"MI-6?" he asked, a joking scoff in his voice. "No, I do not reckon they would like it—whatever the plans they have for you and your mum. But I no longer take orders from them. Not that I ever done much of it when I oughter."

"So Herr Derheim, he is the _only_ reason you came to Brazil?"

"I came for Anya's sake," he told her, feeling unusual saying her name. "And she was too good a person to have gotten muddled up into thinking _you_ had anything to do with what your father done. The fault in Annie's story lies with myself, and the men in her testimony."

"And so you mean to right it by pursuing these men."

"Too late to right it," he confessed, "but I mean to resolve it."

She let out a sigh. The sigh he actually felt like he needed to make. "So that is the life you choose to live, now," she said, "out in the open."

"It is," he agreed, stepping to the boot to grab another hand tool for her.

They stopped speaking after this, the task at hand reaching a point where it was easy to fall into silence, to put one's physical movements out front of whichever way one's mind was presently running, whatever interior thoughts or arguments one was carrying on within.

It lasted long enough that other than a request for a tool, or a needed bit of instruction, nothing else passed between them until she had completed her lesson, the tire removed and then acceptably re-put on the Tucker.

One might say: a lesson in futility, largely ending them at the spot they had just begun. Same tire, same car, same two people.

But not.

Eleri Vaiser now knew how to change a tire, should the need arise. And more than that she knew more about the man who had taught her such a skill. But even as she had done so, his confession, such as it were, left more to be explained, to be learned. And yet, no time for it. Not today. Not on this trip, soon to draw to a close.

He opened a bottle of soda pop for her, his hands clean, unlike her own. She leaned forward and took it from him with a studious eye. One of her waves—usually tucked behind an ear, smoothed like rows in fertile topsoil brushing along her neck fell forward and away from its fellows. Realizing now her hands to be greasy to a fault, she dared not smooth it back. She blew at it, trying to get it out of her vision. He walked closer to her and tucked it behind her ear for her. The tips of his fingers felt the whisper-smoothness of the skin at her temple, the downy hair, there.

She did not thank him as he moved to rest himself up against the car, leaning into it as did she.

Together they looked off into the distance, back toward the city and the bay. Back toward what represented reality to each of them.

He had his answer. Derheim dead. For him it was now onto the next question, the next search from Annie's denouncement statement.

For Eleri—she broke their silence, broke through the distance they had already begun building up between one another over the last half-hour since he had offered her something of truth.

"I am living a half-life, here," she announced, her bottle still resting against her lower lip, her breath flowing across it as she spoke, making it occasionally hum. "And I am so tired of being afraid of it," she mused. "So tired. Being watched, being followed. Always meant to be hiding, not being myself. See," she told him unnecessarily, "you know that fear. That haunting."

He found himself looking to the ground at their feet. Not responding, he kicked at a small lump of dirt she had scraped up in her tire exertions.

"You say I must have a solid plan if I am to leave," she declared, reciting his own advice back to him. "Very well, help me not to be afraid," and here she turned toward him, lowering the bottle from her mouth, crossing her arms over her chest. "Teach me to shoot. Without some sort of protection I will never get away from here."

He drew his head up slowly, away from where he had been looking down, to meet her eyes. She must've been able to read him very well by now, since her own face altered from its look of hopeful request in that instance, even before he spoke the words.

"No time," he told her, not even bothering to shrug to cushion his rejection of her request. "I've a few things to see to before I go, but a very few. You may carry your mum my regrets about not being able to attend her dinner party, or however that's done. Not tomorrow, but next day will be our final lesson. Has to be, my ticket's bought."

**…TBC…**


	20. Chapter 17 - In which Eleri happens

Allen Dale was finding himself distracted, which he did not like. He'd packed that morning, put his things into the valise, informed the concierge he would no longer be in need of his room, settled the bill.

He had sent out the clothes he had lent Eleri to change that tire in, sent out the dress shirt she had lipstick-smudged as well. But whatever these Brazilians had done to those clothes that stood for washing — he found it hadn't managed to wipe the _Eleri_ off of them.

As he had re-folded them it had not escaped his notice, that _something_ about them: not exactly a perfume, not exactly…anything he could put his finger on. As though, instead of being treated with starch, they had been sprinkled with Eleri. As though Eleri were something particular to be found in the waters, here, as troublesome limestone might be found so elsewhere.

He wasn't about to leave perfectly good clothing behind, so he packed them anyway, assuming that whatever it was would abate over distance and time. But found he could not shake the feeling that he was in some way about to take her with him. That she had managed to stow herself away in his valise.

* * *

><p>They two had agreed to meet for a final lesson.<p>

He had been planning to take her to task over his discovering that she had known (at some point) that the person he was seeking was Jarl Derheim, under whatever alias that man was currently living. But when she showed up her mood proved cheery and pleasant. So opposite of the way in which his disposition had been deteriorating since their last meeting that he found he could not do it on this last day, could not leave things between them on a quarrelsome note.

Conversation about her knowing he wanted Derheim and her not telling him was certain to put a crimp in her smile. He would let it go. She had known Derheim dead to rights. So he was looking for a dead man. She did not know enough to realize that delaying his understanding of that meant keeping him from seeking out and finding the others on Annie's list. He had not told her there _were_ any such men until the other day. The worst she had done was delay him—and he could not truthfully say he was sorry for it.

His life of late had been short enough on happy times and good company.

They drove again out into the countryside, though there was little-enough left to still teach her. Today was more like a country drive, and to celebrate he had found directions to a very out-of-the-way spot that served local fare and local spirits, assuming that this would be very out-of-the norm for her, and therefore, a welcome change.

They had eaten heartily, things he could not pronounce and a few things he could not immediately identify. They were the only Europeans in the joint, and he could tell (though he spoke only seven words of Portuguese) that Eleri was leaning heavily on the barmaid for suggestions about what to order and what to drink with it.

He watched on as Eleri seemed to eat for three. She tried everything, at one point having three separate plates in front of her, and a platter of something to her right.

He found himself picking here and there, tasting it all but not eating anything entirely. He did note that she did not try and match him drink for drink, and he wasn't sure if it were (possibly justifiable) wariness where local spirits were concerned or temerity over being behind the wheel following this stop, and an insecurity about how well she might manage driving when she was 'take the edge off' tipsy.

* * *

><p>She did fine.<p>

It was not her fault, really, that they found themselves in a spot of misfortune on their way back to the city. It was not a wreck, after all, when you were by yourself, when you struck nothing, and when the condition of the dirt road you were driving upon had more bearing on your mistake than did your initial mistake. Not a wreck, but certainly a cock-up.

He had gotten out to shout assistance to her in what to do next to extricate the car, thinking to try and repair her confidence by _not_ taking the wheel from her to do it himself.

He'd found a bit of underbrush to stuff under the front tire to try and give it a better traction. He went to stand behind the rear and oversee.

* * *

><p>After they had finished eating she had gotten back into the Tucker's driver's seat, whose door he always held open for her. She was happy enough to be out, to be <em>away<em>. She was not planning to bring up their disagreement from the other day again, to ruin the pleasant time they had shared thus far.

But then, some minutes down the road, and _he_ did.

"Buy the gun, yourself," he had said, _a propos_ of nothing, as if it were as simple as that.

"I cannot be seen to be buying a gun," she had half-sneered (did he _really _think she could be?), "much less become known for asking around for someone to tutor me on how to use it. You _have_ a handgun already," she reminded him, though she had yet to see it. "You _know_ how to shoot." She gave a short exhale. "Please stop speaking about it entirely," she had begged him, "unless you are about to say you've changed your mind. It's pointless and unpleasant and I get enough of that from mouths not your own."

He didn't say anything in response to this, and after time passed, she turned her head away from the road to look at him, to see if he was, in fact, thinking over leaving immediately in order to stay and do as she had asked him.

Heartbeat later, and the Tucker was in the ditch.

* * *

><p>She looked into the rearview. There he stood. In a moment he would be giving her the next bit of direction she needed in trying to get them out of their present predicament.<p>

She noticed, not for the first time, the lay of his shoulders, his shoulder blades underneath the thin covering of his shirt, his coat left here next to her on the seat of the car. The muscle — she didn't know what to call it – that rose from his elbow and up the back of his arm, now exposed as he had rolled his cuffs above that elbow for the task at hand.

Looked like he'd gone and fetched something from the underbrush, tossing it down underneath the car for reasons she did not understand.

_But that was the thing, wasn't it_, she heard unexpectedly echo in her head. She didn't have to understand everything about him to know that if he was doing it, it was for the best.

Go and put on these clothes, he'd said — learn to change a tire. Read these books, he'd said - wait for the anger of the islanders to cool a bit. Make up to your dad on the surface, he'd said — avoid punishment that would keep you from doing as you like.

He must have heard something further down the road — caught a sound of some interest on the wind, his jaw came up and he looked off in the distance.

She saw the skin under his eyebrow draw together, his eye narrow with curiosity, with the challenge of sussing out whatever it was.

He was leaving. Ticket bought. Valise (she assumed) re-packed. Leaving Brazil and her, and possibly this entire continent, _Ta_.

She would never see him again, never speak to him again. Never sit close to him in the front bench seat of the Tucker again; the side of him, his thigh, his arm but a negligible distance from her own.

Never kiss him again.

_Oh, Sacre! _— she had not even kissed him once since they had stumbled upon one another outside the pictures that day. Not even that standard of all Continental greetings, the kiss to each cheek: etiquette kisses that meant almost nothing. Kisses that were as hollow of importance as the slightly open lips bestowing them.

But any kisses given by her would not be hollow of importance now. She could no longer share the outrageous giddy kisses with him they had shared often enough upon the islands. Those silly, uninformed, ignorant kisses she had wasted. Wasted because she had not treasured them. Had not enfolded them into significance.

They were all she was to have left. Those memories, using a man for his lips — his expertise and well-practiced caresses. Encounters that meant nothing. Kisses without promise, without sentiment; only titillation, only sensation.

And now he would leave. And she would not _tell_ him. Tell him that here, in the interior of the car she had him buy for her she understood, finally, that she loved him. Not that she always had — that would be ridiculous. But that she did, now.

Because at last, she understood.

Here it was, a declaration needing voiced. Would she take it to her grave? Or would she be brave and give it to Allen to do with as he pleased? To reject, or treasure always as Sir Edward had?

The paper she had found in his dressing gown pocket — how old might it have been when she had discovered it? The date in the upper corner was one of month and day only, no year provided. But the stationery it was written upon was yellowing and curled with the years of re-reading and human touch. The beautiful words written there scripted in the elaborate hand of a time past.

_My only, forever Love; You have known me for who and what I am,_ it had read when she found time to look it over and examine it. _In moments without pretense or posture, And yet you have generously shown me kindness, care, and chiefly above all, love — of a kind that exists so very sparsely in this life._

Seeing that it was signed by Marion's own mother, Lady Miranda, Eleri had purposed what to do with it, but not before committing the text upon it to heart.

Once that was done, before they lay Lord Nighten to rest in the small Barnsdale cemetery, she had slipped the message back into his cold grip, returning it to the man for whom it was always intended.

But she had not forgotten it. She could still quote it now.

For who else but Allen had known her – always known her for who and what she was? In terrible moments, low moments. Moments of anger and moments of betrayal. And what had he ever shown her? Anger to match her own? At times, yes. But also care, even when she would have tried to turn such attentions away. And kindness — and even, faith in her, in what he believed she could do, who he believed she could be.

And what had he received for it in return? A snotty child trying to hurt back at the world hurting her. Threats, distrust. Wonderment that he could prove so cowardly a figger.

It all looked so differently, now. It all _felt_ so differently now.

To her, she reminded herself. It felt so differently to _her_. If Allen understood love (and perhaps he didn't just yet), but if he did, a man in love would not simply leave the woman he loved behind.

When you wanted someone, when you loved them – the idea of parting was one of pain. Pain to be avoided.

So Allen either did not return her feelings for him, or else he was still in the state of ignorance she had been just hours ago.

"_How badly I want him_," she thought, thinking of the song. "_Want him just as he is./I must try to make the man love me/By and by, I will make the man happy_."

But she didn't have until 'by and by' available to her. She had an hour, maybe slightly more left of this afternoon. That was all.

She had been playing her entire life as though love were a game: a treasure prize for which you need only unearth a map to locate. A maze where wrong turns only brought you closer to correct ones.

Of finding those correct turnings she had years ago begun to despair.

She had never forgotten Lady Miranda's words, but she had not, until this moment, understood what they meant. Understood that those were the things to look for, the compass points, the map coordinates. That love, and truth, would be found among them.

She thought of Sir Edward's death, of Marion's disappearance, of that loss. Of how in the wake of it she had been forced to begin growing up. And then, the horror, the emptiness of Marion's death. Again, she had further grown up. _Was that, then, to be the story of her life? In moments of loss and abandonment being forced to confront them and endure them and mature as a result of them?_

_"You have known me for who and what I am,_ _in moments without pretense or posture."_

Two thoughts came to her: first, that she did not want to carry the unspoken understanding she had just come to about Allen in her life to _her_ grave, and second, that she had no plans to become either lost or abandoned ever again. She was not willing to lose anything else. She was not willing to lose him. She felt rather grown up _quite_ enough.

"Forward!" she saw him shout, the way in which his shoulders moved with his intake of air for the bellow, telling her which direction to drive in order to best get them un-stuck.

She grabbed the gearshift with two hands shaking in a sort of combination of grief and defiance, and shifted into Reverse, jamming the gas pedal down with the assistance of the flat moccasin he had bought her, which, as promised, provided both strength and stability.

The Tucker spun for a moment but agreed to do as she told it to.

Once she shifted back into park, her work done, she could hear his voice cursing — stout, English curses - though she could no longer see him standing, his shoulders, his elbows, now upon the ground.

"_So I pray to heaven above me/Pray until day grows dim/For I wait to make the man love me/As I love him_."

**...TBC...**


	21. Chapter 18 - Now is the hour

"Is it bad?" Eleri had asked him repeatedly as she drove them back to town and hospital, him laid out along the backseat of the Tucker where he had managed, with her help, to drag himself. "Is it very bad?"

"It is bloody damn-well bad enough," he had finally replied through gritted teeth. The pain in his foot where the tire and the weight of the Tucker had driven over it was searing, making it hard to concentrate on much else, and the pain in his chest, which appeared to his untrained eye to be a bruised rib acquired in his subsequent fall, had him needing as much concentration as he could marshal just to breathe.

Broken foot. Cracked rib. Not going anywhere, doctor's orders.

Not that he would be foolish enough to attempt to leave town on his next errands when injured. Who was to say the next phase of his search would be as sedate as had been this one? He might need to run, to climb—or to blend into a crowd (something a man with a limp and cane could not well manage).

Several days abed. Eventually the foot could be walked upon — lightly. Oh, and now Eleri proved as good as gold. She engaged a local nurse for him so that he could return to his hotel (where she had re-let his room), rather than stay shut up in hospital. She had food from local restaurants delivered to his door, bought for him a clutch of canes ranging from dapper to exotic, and managed to visit him every day without exception.

He had no idea how she managed it all in light of her mother's control over her movements and actions. _Another gown in the cooker, perhaps? A pet lapdog kidnapped? Threats to cut off little Gita's pigtails in the night if her wishes were not respected? _He didn't ask.

In fact, if anything, their visits and chats abruptly became less personal, less meaningful than they had been before. (For all that they were now far more frequent.) At first he chalked this up to the intermittent presence of the hired nurse, but by end of the second week her services were no longer needed, and the polite distance that had seemed to grow up between he and Eleri steadfastly remained.

They no longer spoke of the war in any capacity, neither of them referencing the fact that it was unfinished war-business that had both brought him here and would, as soon as could be, take him away. Gone were the mentions of the islands, observations about present-day connections with their shared Occupation past.

She asked no further questions about his true life or his past (pre- or mid- war), and shared none about her own. Instead their conversation swam about among shallow topics: what America was like, occasional sidetrips discussing local politics, avoiding anything real or divisive or essential as one would avoid TODT landmines upon a Guernsey beach.

He began to let himself believe he had taken her original situation too much to heart. After all, here Eleri was, able to move about seemingly more freely than before. She was in good spirits, speaking of present-day matters, not dwelling upon the past. She bought hats and gloves and other trinkets which she brought by to show-off to him, had a manicure done, her hair set. Went to the pictures and came back to tell him about the plot.

_She could stay on here_, he thought to himself, _leave this idea of running away behind._ She would find friends, a life. What could he do about it? If he were to take her with him _where_ would he take her? At what point would they separate? She was not likely able to be granted immigration into the States with her proper name and correct identification, and her bogus ID might not be crafted well enough to stand up to scrutiny — or if it did her alias might already be well-known. Was he to simply take her away and deposit her, a stranger in another country, before _he_ went off?

He could not take her home with him. And not only because he presently had no home — having given up the tight apartment in the crowded city he and Florinda had shared. He was a man without an address. Send all post _Allen Dale, General Delivery, NYC_, he supposed.

He _was_ a man on a mission. Not a man needing extra baggage. And troublesome baggage at that. Eleri might be puppy dogs and rainbows at present, but there was no way it would last.

_Was there?_

In all this she never brought up shooting lessons (or his handgun) again.

Finally _he_ did, knowing he had two weeks further convalescence, and nothing to occupy his days. He was weary of magazines and papers in languages he did not read. Weary of taking the month-old French papers (that were available) and learning stale news.

She had come to the hotel for a visit, and he had sent her for the car, to take them for a drive, he said, at the last moment directing her to the fringes of the city where he had her drop him so that he could buy her a gun.

The shop he chose had several pretty pistols clearly designed with a lady and a lady's handbag in mind. He paid them no attention at all. If Eleri were going to learn to shoot, she would have a proper weapon that she could depend upon.

He bought the best handgun among their inventory and made a gift of it to her, telling himself that in doing so, and in giving her two weeks' worth of lessons outside of town he was doing all he could to equip her before his newly re-bought tickets would take him away.

Neither one mentioned that he was doing exactly what she had asked of him (and of which he had declined) before his injury had prevented his making good on the original travel plans he had arranged.

But he was not so foolish as to believe neither one were thinking it. It was his constant companion waking and sleeping, knowing this: Eleri had gotten her way.

* * *

><p>Somehow he had managed to convalesce long enough to again be in peril of the invitation to Eleri's mum's dinner party. He managed to acquire an acceptable dinner jacket, his foot well enough for short spells of walking and weight-bearing, his rib tender but no longer crippling.<p>

That night he caught a taxi to the address upon the invitation, and it pulled up to the front of an elaborate and quite new apartment building, in which "Edythe Merker" (or, as British Intelligence knew, Lady Adalgisa von Bachmeier) occupied the penthouse suite.

It was probably not a very wise move on his part, accepting such an invitation. Especially if MI-6 really did watch closely over things here. It would do his own off-book one-man mission no good for his presence here to raise eyebrows back at the Ministry as to what an old timer like himself were doing here, among this company, and not being where they expected him to be (where his file, marked 'inactive', _said_ he would be). For all that he was now an American citizen, for all that he had not worked for SIS since the unit disbanded after the war, it was their pension cheques he still received, though neither he nor any others of the unit had been allowed to officially retire. MI-6, for all that he had never paid them too much thought in past _or_ present, would still believe he was their creature. And they would not care for their 'inactive' creature to be walking around amongst any active investigations or surveilling in which they were presently engaged.

But he had thought to come for Eleri's sake. It would be their last night, as he was leaving tomorrow afternoon. _Really_ leaving this time.

At the cab's arrival that evening, Eleri surprisingly stepped out from within a dark stand of ornate — but shielding — topiaries nearby the doorman's post. Naturally Allen had not expected to see her until he arrived via lift at the penthouse level. Why she was here, meeting his taxicab at street level, he could not immediately understand.

She was dressed in a shade of cool light blue that spoke of ice and crystal and played off the darkness of her hair. The crinolined, full skirt of her evening gown was above the ankle, but not by much, and underneath the shoulder wrap she wore, the sparkles sewn upon it caught and threw light as did the precious stones hanging from her ears. A pair of three-quarter length matching gloves was in her right hand as she stepped toward the cab.

He thought he saw her bright eyes spark as she did not wait for the cabbie to attend upon her, but opened the rear door and seated herself inside.

"Wot's this?" he asked, finding himself half-smiling. "Thot it were butlers and footmen and the like who met the cars."

She smiled, more intensely than he had seen her do in weeks, and instead of answering him she turned to the driver and gave him an address, and an admonition to be quick about getting them there.

"We're not going to that awful party," she told him, in her first burst since his injury of something of the Eleri he had encountered when he had first arrived in Brazil. "It's full of people like Schmidtznagel's dad. 'Important in the war'. _Everyone_ was important in the war, don't you know? The lowest, basest men: _important_ in the war. 'Dance with his son, Eleri, won't you? His father was important in the war. The family lost their ancestral lands, what a pity. Be kind to him. Commiserate with his tragedy. He's banished here! Suffering! _Think_ of what they sacrificed for the Fatherland!'" she scoffed. "Go to that party?" she spat out. "I'd rather die." She used her free hand to settle the skirt of her dress. "And so would you. We're going _out_."

"Well, I trust _I'm_ not overdressed for what you've planned," he quipped to her, not sure why he fell back on teasing sarcasm instead of presenting her the compliment her toilet deserved, "for I see you most certainly are."

At this she stuck out her tongue at him, ruining the image of the sophisticated woman her clothes and self-possession had for the moment created.

He laughed in answer to the rude gesture, pounding the flat tip of his cane upon the taxi's floorboards in his amusement.

* * *

><p>The taxi dropped them less than twenty minutes later at the location she had given him, closer now to his hotel than to her mother's apartment. Here they were not in the club district of the city. Rather, it was a nice, sedate neighborhood near the water, the sounds of Carnaval in its last full day could be heard coming from the beach where the remaining revelers congregated.<p>

An unremarkable building stood before them. Eleri walked them around to the side where a rough-looking door opened at her request and they stepped indoors.

Stepped _back_ might be a better turn of phrase, for before him was something not at _all _of 1954. Within the unremarkable building was a nightclub. Obviously an elite nightclub, disinterested in patrons unvetted and uninvited.

There was a hat check/coat check girl at the ready, taking their things. Out of instinct more than conscious thought, he tipped her as she gave him their check ticket. Beyond there was a band playing on stage, a dance floor ringed by tables. The lighting was low, moody as one might expect in any club. It took him a moment to put his finger upon it fully. But there it was. The band was playing an old song. A song popular during the war. But not only were they playing it (which was not really _that_ unusual), they were playing it _exactly_ as it would have been played during the war. As though no time, no change in musical styles had happened since then.

Swastikas hung here and there upon the walls, among the draperies, and were incorporated into the centerpieces upon every table.

The men in attendance wore dinner jackets, like the one Allen had found for the evening. But the other men wore them as though they were part of a uniform: instead of boutonnieres, military ribbons and medals hanging upon their breast pocket sides sometimes obscuring their pocket squares with the amount of such meritorious accolades.

And the majority of the women were dressed as they would have been (for the height of fashion) during the war. Hairstyles, the cut of their frocks — even the perfumes he caught wind of as they passed were fragrances popular during the war.

Eleri must've felt him tense with the realization.

"It's my mother's club," she told him in a whisper as they walked toward a table. "No one will ever think of looking for us here."

_Smart thinking_. "But it's bloody 19 and 42," he replied.

"I know," she agreed. "It's their plan to hold on to their glory days. But we can enjoy it a little, right?" her eyes showed that she needed him to agree. "We needn't speak to anyone. I thought maybe, since you are—" she did not say 'leaving', "that you might manage a dance before the night is over?"

"Well, let's hope the _beef's_ not old," he told her, agreeing not to leave as they walked past another couple being served their main course.

It was a queer spot to be sure, this klatch of people so desperate to hold on to the past, to ignore that the world had moved on from them. But even so, he did like a big band.

* * *

><p>The beef was <em>not<em> old. Neither were the potatoes and several others of fancy-prepared veg he did not outright recognize. In fact, the beef was exceptional in both its quality and its preparation. The selection of European wines was, well, he knew enough to know he ought to be impressed. And the pastry offering was formidable.

He could not have recalled what they two spoke about. Again, Eleri and he had retreated into whatever their present politeness might be called. They were not overly chatty, and what little they did say was forgettable, inconsequential.

Occasionally they laughed, but not too heartily. They were proving themselves able to interact as very refined (by not speaking with any degree of candor or intimacy), and more than one head (male and female alike) had turned when Eleri arrived in her ice blue frock. And Allen knew the telling dynamics of a turning head well-enough to know that for every one that had turned because Heinrik Vaiser's daughter and Baron von Bachmeier's step-daughter had arrived, was a head that turned simply because a striking woman, flawlessly attired had entered the room on the arm of an unknown escort. There was nothing outdated or nostalgic about Eleri's present style.

And he reckoned he cut a dashing-enough figger himself, cane and all. His coat fit well, his lapels and cuffs were up to scrutiny, and the cane — well, he found he liked the look of it, something of a dapper Astaire-like quality to it — though it did wobble sometimes in his necessary employment of it.

* * *

><p>Following their dinner they listened a bit to the music. He did not have to point out how he noticed the band was still sticking with the Jerry-approved soundtrack of those bygone years, avoiding songs by Jewish composers or those that Jewish or Black performers had made popular.<p>

_Yes, obviously, very much Eleri's mother's club._

He flexed his foot a few times following the dessert course, put a spot of weight upon it as a test before standing and hooking his cane over his arm so that he might grant her wish and ask her if she would like to dance.

* * *

><p>He had not been out dancing for awhile — certainly not since he had left America for the Channel Islands on his Annie errand.<p>

He and Eleri had managed about two and a half songs, though no one watching them would have said their dancing was at all energetic. They moved pretty much the same (by virtue of his injury) to all tempos, and commanded very little of the floor, barely more than what might be taken up by a telephone box.

Both were studiously ignoring the fact that they had fallen silent, no room, now, even for neutral pleasantries. As their bodies drew closer in the embrace of the dance, their minds closed off, already disconnected from what was going on presently (them dancing), skipping ahead to what was later to come: their parting.

The band had taken up a Bing Crosby favorite, and had their own version of Bing present to sing the bittersweet lyrics, German accent and all. "_Now is the hour, When we must say goodbye/Soon you'll be sailing, far across the sea._"

Allen felt Eleri stiffen in his arms as the singer began the sentimental tune. Her unexpected stiffness, and the paths of his own mind at present, caused him to react likewise.

"This is -" she seemed to stumble in her speech, "they play this every night at this time. That is all. It is their tradition."

"Right," he agreed easily, finding his own hand to be disconcertingly damp against the upper waist of the back of her gown. "Course. Who doesn't like a little tradition?" he tried to marry the light comment to a shrug.

He could feel the swinging weight of the cane upon his arm where it hung, lest he need make quick use of it. Everything that touched him quite abruptly seemed to do so with far more force and weight than he had noticed before. He felt his heart queerly beginning to pound as if in rhythm to the song's slow, strong beat, and he could not manage to get a breath of air that did not seem overpowered by Eleri's chic perfume.

He had been holding her in his arms as the dance required, but not entirely close. The cane and his own instinct to protect his foot had prevented him from too-tight, too-intimate a hold.

He was not certain if it were his own, sudden unsteadiness that prompted his arms into more deeply enfolding her, or his unexpected need to feel as though he were taking this moment to bid her his farewell, as the song implied. Either way, he let his arm slip along the sleekness of her frock's fabric at her waist, brought his other hand up and around, so that their two hands which had been properly held mid-air now came to rest upon his upper chest nearby his shoulder, and he felt her resting against him, felt his hold upon her — and hers upon him so real, so intense in that moment as he continued to move to the sound of the music that only his sudden heightened awareness of her could tell him where he ended and she began. "_While you're away, Oh, then remember me/When you return you'll find me waiting here._"

He did not know if she could feel the tremble in him.

Certainly he felt it. His mind began racing. _This is what I want for you, Eleri_, he thought, though he had no way of knowing how one spoke such things aloud. _Happiness, and security. And a bloke who will take you out dancing when you wish to go. Who will feel proud of how you look upon his arm. Who will not notice any encumbrance, any drag when you are upon it. Who will hold you because he likes how you feel against him, and who will not settle for empty pleasantries coming out of your mouth, but who will want to know your mind. The good and the ill, and the sad. Who will row with you, but always come home to supper after the row. Who will tell you you are gentleness and kindness — and remember you can be those things even in moments when you're not. A chap who will take you far away from here and let you live in the present, however you see fit to do so._

What ridiculous things to want for someone. He was no matchmaker, no great theorist when it came to women outside the bedroom and away from the dance floor. And Elerinne Vaiser was no fantasy pin-up girl; often enough she was as much a trick as a treat. But, bless her, he wanted to wake up one morning knowing she had found that sort of happiness. That kind of a person to love her.

He needed to know that.

_All of it bollocks_, he knew. He knew little enough how to find such things for himself, much less how to find them for _her_.

_And all before tomorrow afternoon when he was set to leave?_

The song kept on, almost lazily repeating its refrain. He began to notice that it was not only his own heart behaving not quite of itself. Consequent of his close embrace with her, he was also feeling Eleri's heart, or more her breath, accelerated beyond what would be normal for their present level of exertion.

He tried to look down at her without noticeably separating from their embrace.

_Could it be possible? Could Eleri?_

_Could he?_

There was a tap upon his shoulder, insistent enough that he could not mistake it for anything else. Another man cutting in.

_At this moment? Really?_

_Right now?_

He meant to turn to them and beg off in some way, but before he knew it _he_ was turned about, standing awkwardly across from a new partner he had never met. Eleri, gone from his embrace, out of his arms, and of all people, SS Lieutenant Geis Gisbonnhoffer dancing away to another part of the floor with her.

And the band played on.

**...TBC...**


	22. Chapter 19 - A Doppelkorn toast

**A/N:** If you haven't seen it, I posted a holiday fic for the holidays based on the Don't series, called "_Don't: The Ghosts of Christmas Past_". It has some Carter with Zara and some gang fluff. It's here at

* * *

><p><em>Now, back to your regularly scheduled nervous breakdown...<em>

* * *

><p>Allen stood stock-still on the dance floor, gob-smacked.<p>

The late fortyish/early fiftyish woman across from him took a step forward. She was petite, and blonde as a girl in braids on the cover illustration of a copy of _Heidi_ he had once seen, the spread of hip and stomach that often settled in on women of her age not truly holding her in its grip. Her hairstyle was outdated, but still flattering.

Her cheeks flushed with the pink of embarrassment, discernible even in the low light of the club.

"You have to forgive him," she said, her eyes following the line of where Gisbonnhoffer had waltzed away with Eleri. "He was so very surprised to find you both here together. I fear he may have gotten a bit carried away."

Her smile was genuine; apologetic and disarming — and totally disorienting to Allen.

"Who are _you_?" he asked, answering her smooth German with his own very put-out English, accent on full-display, his mind not yet switching its gears, more edge to his voice, less tolerance than he might usually choose to inject it with under similarly surprising circumstances.

He tried madly to recall the last few, crucial moments. Dancing with Eleri; he could still feel the imprint of her upon his chest, he still labored slightly to take in breath. Then, that tap to his shoulder which could mean only one thing.

He had turned, reluctant, but only half-present in any moment that was not occurring within his own, overcrowded head. Like waking from a dream; sweaty, winded, intense — but waking into a nightmare: Gisbonnhoffer's face.

Older, yes, greying to greyed. He must be more than fifty, now. And here he stood among the other men like him, his dinner jacket covered in military insignia and ribbons and the occasional medal. Damn him if he didn't still have on his old swastika armband as well.

If a person could stutter in action and not only speech, then Allen did stutter.

'May I have the honor of cutting in?' Geis had asked, normal as a bottle of milk and the morning paper appearing on your front stoop.

Allen had not managed an answer.

He had felt Eleri being steered away from him, him unable to catch her eye, to learn her reaction to this turn of events. _Had it been a positive one?_ She had once carried a torch for this rotter. _Had it been a smug one?_ _This all part of some sort of plan?_ (Though for what Allen could not imagine.)

_Had her reaction been the one __he__ was left, standing here, feeling?_ The one of being suddenly and coldly incomplete, having coming to the cusp of some hugely terrifying discovery and being snatched back from the brink before anything permanent, anything solid or lasting, could occur?

"Yes, of course, we have never met," he was distracted from his reverie, hearing this new woman say diffidently, "I'm Gretchen Gisbonnhoffer — Geis' wife. Only now, of course, we are living as the Gael de Lisbons. He says you — drove a car? For his Kommandant during the war?"

It took more effort to reply than Allen would have expected. Once such admissions, such phony banter had come to him so smoothly, so entirely without the friction of irritation.

"I were the Kommandant's driver," he agreed, without putting a period on his sentence, as though he might say more, that although he had yielded to this woman's husband in the matter of dancing with Eleri, he was not yet ready to yield the floor to her conversationally.

The song had ended. Light clapping broke out around them. Allen was at a loss. He could see Gisbonnhoffer's head above those of the other dancers, but the Lieutenant and Eleri were nowhere immediately nearby.

Not knowing what else to best do in the moment, he stepped toward Gisbonnhoffer's wife and proceeded to begin dancing as the next song began, looking for a way to circle back to where Eleri had been waltzed off with.

_Imagine me with my head on your shoulder/And you with your lips getting bolder/A sky full of moon and a sweet mellow tune/I'll buy that dream._

* * *

><p><em>Why had he handed her off so easily?<em> Eleri felt foggy, struggling for focus. As though she had always been in the sun, and quite abruptly had stumbled into the heretofore unheard-of shade. One moment she had been ready to melt into Allen, her face in intimate proximity to his chest, the underside of his chin, his scent there, his breath, his – texture about to overwhelm her, coupled with the recent and overwhelming knowledge of her need to be with him, of his imminent departure.

Her hands felt damp, or perhaps his had been so where they had held hers.

She went from the warmth of his embrace to being taken away from it, and held in another. But whereas Allen's arms were warm, strongly soft and something she desired, she found herself now with Geis Gisbonnhoffer, whose dancing frame was as stiff and angular as a soldier standing at attention, whose chest might rise and fall with breath, but rigidly so. Whose hands were as chill to the touch as the cold metal ribbons and medals upon his coat.

As he danced her away, this new uninjured partner able to make use of a greater part of the floor, his long legs and intact feet steered her where he wished her to go, the properness of his hold kept her at the appropriate length from him, forced her into better posture, shocking her into the clear-headedness of sobriety like a head ducked into icy water.

By the time she processed that he was smiling — out, over her shoulder, not technically down at her (still keeping his chin perfectly parallel to the floor) - she was returned to herself again. Her heart rate had dialed back to normal, and her exposed skin no longer felt like it was pricking with goose flesh to the point she wished to begin shedding her clothes.

"It is always a pleasure to see you, Fraulein," Gisbonnhoffer said to her in his familiar voice. As usual a voice that was smooth, but also detached.

"You are very kind to say so," she offered him a shallow reply with no sincerity behind it.

"And you are out tonight – with an unexpected escort," he continued on, his eyes not dropping to her level.

"If you can call him that." She let it be an indifferent-sounding assessment, bordering on arch.

His head inclined in mild astonishment as they went into a turn. "Do you mean to say you are here with him against your will?"

"You know of my mother by reputation?" she inquired, knowing that Baroness von Bachmeier had little enough use for unremarkable former members of the ranks – even _had_ they once assisted her ex-husband. Her drawing room was even now full of men as powerful or more powerful than her _current_ husband. And that was how she liked it. Men like Herr Geis interested the Baroness very little, if ever at all.

Gisbonnhoffer assured Eleri that her mother's reputation preceded her. "Her ladyship has never been represented to me as a woman who would willingly see her daughter, once affianced to a decorated military genius and noted aristocrat take up with a _mere_ chauffeur."

She did not falter in her prompt response, nor in the tight smile to go with it. "But that is where you are wrong."

The song came to an end, and they paused for a moment, stepping apart from one another. Eleri looked about, but she could not find Allen and Frau Gisbonnhoffer among those on the dance floor. A quick look to the side confirmed that the table she and Allen had claimed was also absent his presence.

"Pray, enlighten me," Gisbonnhoffer requested, ensuring she could not walk away from him by re-presenting his hands and self for a second dance.

She was certain any hardness she could detect in his follow-up question was imagined on her behalf.

The music began, a fluid transition from the earlier song. "_Imagine me in a gown white and flowery/And you thanking Dad for my dowry/A church full of folks, those last minute jokes/I'll buy that dream_," the girl singer began.

Still, there was Gisbonnhoffer's extended hand. She looked at it, not at him.

"During the war," Eleri told him, accepting his repeated offer, and not bothering to fully cover up something like a sigh, "you may well know, Mr. Allen performed certain…offices for my father, many of which my father found invaluable, and it would seem my mother shares his indebtedness on this matter. In the years since the war Mr. Allen has found great success in business, my mother — and he - tell me. Enough success, it would seem, to vacation half-a-world away from his Guernsey estate on little more than a whim."

Though it did not seem physically possible, she felt Herr Geis further stiffen in his bearing, and for a fraction of a second his hands' pressure on her intensified.

"He yet lives on Guernsey?" he asked, a quiet moment later, his voice showing no alteration to mirror the unexpected flares in his demeanor. In fact, it seemed even less inflected than usual.

"Where else would he live?" she asked, her voice working to show how much contempt the subject of her father's wartime chauffeur inspired within her. "Unlike us, _he_ had no reason to abandon the islands following the British retaking them."

"And he has been there since last we were acquainted." It was spoken like a detective coming to a surprising, but foreshadowed conclusion.

She nodded in bored agreement. "Making money, how is it said?" she let derision show through in her delivery. "'Hand, over fist'?"

"_We'll settle down in Dallas/In a little plastic palace/Oh it's not as crazy as you think_."

For only the third time, Gisbonnhoffer's eyes sought out hers, and she forced hers up to meet them. There was something behind them that she could not quite decipher.

"And yet he remains too odious for your notice?" the former lieutenant asked, a sharp edge tingeing the word 'notice'.

She chose to ignore what was behind his eyes, the sharpness in his question, as he would expect Elerinne Vaiser to do.

"_Imagine me eighty-three wearing glasses/And you ninety-two making passes/It doesn't sound bad, and if it can be had/I'll buy that dream_."

Eleri let out a huff. "And why should _I_ notice a man nearly old enough to be my father who at best can offer me only occasional trips into the larger world? I have had enough of the provincial life, Herr Geis. To please my mother I have agreed to partner him this evening. I expect to be repaid by her for my every kind attention. And my bodyguard? Expects _him _to behave himself."

The notion of her bodyguard stepping in should the former chauffeur overstep his romantic boundaries seemed to inspire some activity of thought in Gisbonnhoffer. Quickly he put forth an invitation, his eyes dancing a bit wildly, suddenly lit a bit too brightly. "And would you agree - as a personal favor to me - to partner him again tomorrow for an early dinner at our hotel?" he asked.

His request was nearly as unexpected as his earlier cutting in. Gisbonnhoffer had never been much of a social creature.

"Your invitation is tempting enough," she told him, "excepting _his_ company. However, I am assured that he is set to depart the country tomorrow, after having once already postponed his travel. So…"

"_I'll buy that dream_."

The song was coming to an end, and though she still could not spot Allen among the dancers or spectators, she willed the powers that be to grant her the opening she needed to get free of Herr Geis.

Yet the news that Allen was set to imminently leave Brazil seemed to sincerely surprise - actually, more like discomfit - him. "That is…a shame. Come to our table, then," he extended a second, altered invitation. "At least — toast with us. We have all of us been long separated, and it would be a pity if we did not at least take a moment to acknowledge our past friendships."

At this, she found her mouth open, ready to turn the second invitation aside as she had the first, when something stopped her and she closed it, turning her lips into a small smile of consent, followed by a shallow nod of her head.

The band struck the last chord of the song, and, mercifully, he let go her hand.

* * *

><p>What had been the overwhelming pounding of his heart from dancing so close to Eleri had in the ensuing moments switched to pressure of a very different kind.<p>

"I did not realize you were in Brazil," he announced, conversationally, though his mouth was too dry to fool anyone better skilled at spotting a man frantically searching for some sort of cover to mask the moment in.

This Greta's face was open and trusting. Nothing like Eleri's, nothing like Marion's, where something was always at work behind the eyes, beneath the skin. A wave of confidence began to swell over him. He was _not_ to be abandoned by his talents on other fronts besides the Eleri-one, he was glad to realize.

"Oh, we are not," Greta Gisbonnhoffer answered him. "We own property outside Santiago and we have settled there. We only visit the Bay on rare holidays. So it is fortuitous that we run in to one another."

"Very much so," he agreed, though without enthusiasm, not taking his eyes off Geis' head where it moved and occasionally twirled in the dance.

"You have brought out Fraulein Eleri tonight?" she asked, showing herself familiar with the Kommandant's daughter.

"More like she brought me out," he quipped, and found it was easy enough to settle into light repartee and inconsequential chatter with this woman while he waited to get near enough to Gisbonnhoffer to reclaim Eleri and shake her until she rattled for not telling him she knew where, of all people, Geis Gisbonnhoffer was hiding in plain sight.

The song ended, and they stepped apart to politely applaud, as did the other couples surrounding them.

"You must forgive _me_," he said, attempting to avoid another turn with her by indicating his cane and his injury. It was not entirely a lie, his foot _was_ beginning to ache.

"Goodness!" she replied, and her shock was real. "I had not properly noticed. You ought have said something. I had no business keeping you on your feet…"

"No harm done," he replied, not bothering to force sincerity into his delivery. "But I think I will take my seat now."

He gave her a little sort of bow, and she nodded to him. He did not take her hand, nor offer her his arm to escort her back to his (or her) table. No, he made directly for Eleri and Geis, where he had last seen them, his cane thumping with each time he brought its tip to the floor.

* * *

><p>He found Eleri, also now on her own, walking off the dance floor as the next song began.<p>

"_Say it's only a paper moon/Sailing over a cardboard sea_."

Her _au courant_ frock stood out from among the passé fashions on the other dancers. It caught the light and twinkled to the eye just as it had when he had first seen her in it from the back of his taxi. Her skin was probably just as soft and just as perfumed as it had seemed to be when he and she were dancing, but he found himself impervious to those sensory feasts now, found they had no present hold upon him.

"_Yes, it's only a canvas sky/Hangin' over a muslin tree_."

If his mind had had room for it he would have marveled that he had let the scheming little minx heat him up so, all over a dance. That he, Allen Dale, would have been taken in, brought to distraction, nearly brought to believe – brought to _think_ – to feel like -. She must think him king rube.

"_It's a melody played in a penny arcade_."

"Wot is this trickery?" he fumed to her in hot undertones as they walked back toward their table.

"It is not trickery," she spat back at him, and it was obvious by her tone and demeanor she was eager to clear herself in his eyes – that she understood how he would read what had just occurred. Into what direction his mind would naturally travel.

"_It's a Barnum and Bailey world/Just as phony as it can be_."

"How was I to know they would be here?" she asked, hushed in her intensity. "They do generally come to town around the time of Carnaval — but I did not know they would be _here_."

"And what is the story on his wife, then?" Allen asked, expecting a full debrief though Eleri was no soldier, nor even a trained agent.

She looked at him with confused surprise. "There is no - no _story_. She is a sweet woman who I doubt has any idea what he really is. He has a daughter younger than me, and he had a son, also younger than me, who was killed under suspicious circumstances. The rumors said he got into a tangle with some men who were trying to get to his father. But I don't know," her brows drew together as she thought about the young man Hans. "_I_ heard he had developed a taste for certain appetites and medicines, and overindulged in them one time too often."

"So this is all entirely coincidence?" His tone and the cast of his eyes showed he had not entirely given up the thought of shaking her till she rattled.

"_But it wouldn't be make-believe…_"

"Yes, _of course_."

They were standing alongside their table now, but neither seemed inclined to commence sitting at it.

"Why would I wish to throw you in Gisbonnhoffer's path? Much less myself?" she asked, and then spoke as though her teeth might cut her tongue (or vice versa). "I cannot bear the sight of him."

Immediately, with a sharp nod, he took her at her word. "Then we're off."

"_If you believed in me_."

"We cannot," her brows shot up onto her forehead. "He has invited us to his table for a Doppelkorn toast."

_A Doppelkorn __toast__? An invitation by Gisbonnhoffer? The man who, in any scenario, had killed Marion? Raped Anya? Raise __his__ glass to the man who had broken Ox? _

_A __toast__?_

"You expect me to go _drink_ with 'im?" The heat he had felt earlier was returning, but this time in the form of an anger he was not able to see any present advantage in hiding. The girl singer warbled on about make-believe. Chirped, more like.

He felt stretched out of shape and pulled thin. His chest threatened to twinge from this new, unexpected stress being slopped on top of whatever one might name the physically taxing moment he had been undergoing before whilst dancing with Eleri.

Eleri's face took on an expression of pleading, and she began to speak swiftly, as though if she could explain well-enough all would be put-right. "After you leave, _I_ have to go on being around these people — running in to these sorts of people. Unless you can think of an excuse that's not going to hurt Frau de Lisbon's feelings and put me in a future awkward position with her, then _yes_, put on your 'face' and sit long enough to drink with the swine. I have done so often enough over the last ten years with him and with men like him. It will kill you only a little," she said, and then she had the nerve to take him to task, pulling her chin up and beginning to look defiantly at him. "And then _you_ may be well shot of it. Of us all. The Frau is one of the only kind people I have ever met around here." She looked as though she might cry or shout from frustration.

Although Allen heard her words saying one thing, he felt the agitation coming off her, even in his own state of twisted, unexpected emotions. She did not _wish_ to drink with this man. She no more wished to stay at this club than did he.

_But was she right?_ Would it be wrong of him to pull so selfish a trick as vanishing after an invitation which _he_ might easily ignore and walk away from, leaving her the one to deal with the fall-out, and those snubbed by his actions?

Certainly he could 'put on his face' for her. Could stand for a toast. And then they would excuse themselves and leave, and he could get his head on straight. Sort this emotional roller coaster of a night in quiet and in peace. On a plane out of and away from this forsaken country.

He was the man known as Dale Allen, after all. He could kiss the hand of Hitler himself and none the wiser. But he was finding, little by little, his life had become no longer a question of what he _could_ do.

Looking to the distance, he could see the Gisbonnhoffer table from here; Frau Greta was already seated at it, discussing something with a waiter. Likely, the order of schnapps and the bringing of glasses.

For the toast.

_How many times?_ How many times had he seen Anya Grigorovna bring just such a tray; tall, clear bottle and small glasses into Gisbonnhoffer's Treeton office so that Vaiser's lieutenant might celebrate some personal victory? Toast the Reich? Warm from a chill?

_How many bloody times?_

Had she been afraid every second in her life at Treeton? Fearful each time she opened the door to Gisbonnhoffer's office? As she closed her eyes at night to sleep?

Had she imagined breaking those tall, clear bottles and using one to slit his throat?

Or _her_ wrist?

_A toast. With Gisbonnhoffer?_ What would she say of Dale Allen, were she to know it? What would she think of her Mr. Allen, then? She had stayed behind for him – to seek for information about Mitch being held – because _he_ had asked it. She had agreed to go on facing the horror at Treeton, the torment of Gisbonnhoffer. Because he, Allen, had (unwittingly) asked it.

_And now he would share a drink with the man?_ Would look at Geis and not see, instead, Annie's face? Would behave as though the last months of his life tracking and working to avenge Anya bore no weight, were of no consequence – when presently that quest was just about all the life he had? All the purpose in himself he could muster?

Because _Eleri Vaiser_ asked it of him? Because Kommandant's daughter requested he 'put on' his face?

This was bollocks.

In his indignation he became intensely aware of the negligible weight of Annie's fragile denouncement paper, which he always carried upon his person.

_Too much_, he thought, focusing on Eleri, though it was Geis against whom his rage was truly kindled. "You ask too much." _Want too much, need too much_. She spent all her time telling him how little she had here, _too_ little. "Yet you _always_ have your way," he sniped at her.

His foot twinged.

But still she asked. 'Kill you only a little,' she had said. He wagged his head at her, shaking it in the negative. "You dunno wot will kill a man. A thousand little smiles, each of which pinpoint-rots a soul, costs him some of who he is. 'Til he no longer knows anymore. Look at you lot," he jerked his chin at her. "You stand there and ask me to meet wickedness with bleeding cordiality. You ask me to stand across from a murderer and pretend I don't see the bodies rottening at 'is feet." His jaw was thrust out in disgust, and had they been outside he might very well have spat to show his further contempt. As it was, he scoffed. "I would rather wallow in the knee-deep shite of pestilent pigs than see myself standing at that man's table about to share a drink with him. And if you haven't spied _that_ about me, love — then –" he took a measured step back from her, not bothering to soften his heavy footfalls. "You and I've never really met, and I dunno who you think's been squiring you about and keepin' _your_ secrets—"

But she did not let him finish.

Her gloved hands clutched at one another. "Please," she whispered, her eyes brim-full at his fury, her lip nearly shaking. "Please. Not here — do not do this _here_…" desperation was in her low-pitched voice. She spoke hushed, urgently, pleadingly. "Not tonight. I will ask nothing more — I _promise_. Nothing," she begged him. Three tears now fell as she struggled to keep the rest of her face placid.

He looked about them, taking in the others present, suddenly again aware of their presence. His voice had not carried too awfully much, but it had been angry enough to get the attention of those among the closest tables to them — the emotion in it, if not his words.

Another talent of his snapped back into place, like a newly-tuned guitar string. Of course Eleri would not wish to be brought low among these people, to have it said that the man she arrived with had scorned and rebuked her publicly. She hated these people for who they were – but they _were_ her society. Her position among them already precarious.

He stopped speaking, but made no move to apologize for what had already been said. His face was hard-set, his posture implacable.

"I will go to Frau Gisbonnhoffer," she promised, her words coming quickly as she tried to appease him. "And make our excuses as to why we cannot join her."

He may have grunted in assent. He was forced to shift his posture and lean heavily upon his cane, the forceful step back a moment ago jarring the newly healing bones.

"I'm for the loo," he announced, as she walked away, singly, to her task.

"I will join you at the coat check," she threw over her shoulder (though there was no need to say so, he had assumed as much), and the other diners went back to what they had been doing, sensing any further row would occur in private, either in a car or away from the club. Nothing more to see here, move along.

And Allen knew, even in this, that Eleri spoke so in order to save face, in order to notify those watching them that they two would still be leaving together, as they had arrived. That she had not been spurned. Not been abandoned.

He changed his grip on the cane, watched for a moment as she walked, the swish of her skirt against hip and leg, and found he did not mind being party to such a trick, so long as it did not bring him into social proximity with Geis Gisbonnhoffer.

**...TBC...**


	23. Chapter 20 - A dull-but-weighted thud

**USA - Kentucky - Nicholasville, outside Lexington, The Bertrand Otto Family Stables – 1955 - **Josie Otto paid no attention to the messiness inherent in the birth she was attending any more than she would have had _she_ been the one birthing new life.

Her older brother Fred watched on as she expertly managed the mare and brought her safely through the process, then turned her attention to the perfect foal that had been the fruit of both their labors. Fred knew he had only been present as back-up in case the mare had run into trouble. And he still liked to watch a birth, he had to confess. To gain bragging rights to having been there at the breeding and at the birthing of any horse that might go on to do something big, prove something exceptional. Mama and the others, of course, they stayed up at the big house.

Their passion for the family business strong, but somewhat less so than his youngest sister's — her life (still) less full than theirs of people and concerns, her attention free to be more focused. Her investment more complete.

"We'll call her Lovely Nighten Mary," she informed him as soon as she saw to it the foal could stand.

"You sure?" he asked, not certain if it were best to name a horse after a woman whose unexplained disappearance had so affected him, and his family. Not certain it was a name they were any of them yet ready to throw around casually, as one might have to do with a horse's.

"My horse, ain't she?" Josie threw him a look that said, 'pshaw, don't worry'. "Bessie won't get it, and if she does — Well, we'll call her 'Love' for short." She smiled, largely, broadly.

He knew she was exhausted — such taxing vigils were not for the faint of heart, but they energized her, much as (though his laid-back demeanor barely showed it) they energized him.

"Don't _you_ feel like celebratin'?" she asked, half-way to making it a challenge.

"Ain't it best to wait 'til we have something to celebrate?" he moved over toward the resting mother, a particular favorite of his, went down on a knee, and ran his fingers through her forelock.

Josie gave him a look that showed she was unconvinced by his appeal for restraint in the matter of Marion Nighten.

"Did you meet the same man I met?" she asked, arching her brows. "Sure as you're standin' there you could tell he was stubborn as hell." The way she said it, even a stranger could tell such a trait only appealed to her. She got a downright twinkle in her eye calling it out. "He's got her same bullheadedness. Why, he might be able to – by Christmas –"

Fred watched on and did not interfere as his sister concocted the happiest of happy endings for Marion and the man Oxley; the two of them reunited before years' end. And she was right, Oxley was clearly a dogged sort. But although Fred wanted to celebrate the discovery of Marion's wartime husband — the discovery of a kindred searcher in her disappearance, he himself had searched to the point he knew that sheer doggedness was not going to be enough. It would require luck, and faith, and…dangit if he didn't know it too well: it would require Marion's _wanting_ to be found.

And maybe Josie was right. Maybe it was time. Maybe Oxley was the man for the task.

He cracked a smile to his sister despite his doubts. "I'll file the paperwork," he told her, showing he agreed to the name as she appraised her newest family member.

"Out of Lardner's Ring," Josie mused for a moment on the foal's parentage. "Likely be her last, reckon?"

"Truth be told, I didn't think she had another in her after her last," he confessed, bringing up Lardner's previous complicated delivery two years prior of a highly-strung, and very fast stallion. He looked to the aging mare, who had risen to standing, still the apple of his eye. "'Was only _your_ belief in her that had me breed her again. Mama was dead-set against it. Bessie, too."

"Well, I know a little about mares they don't," Josie bragged as she made to stand, awash in the pleasure of the moment.

He saw the way her face shone with pride at what she had brought about. "Never want any of your own?" he asked, broaching the subject of Josie's marital future – one which she usually refused to consider too seriously.

"'Course I'd like a little something warm of my own," her eyebrow flicked as she continued to have eyes only for her new foal.

"But..?"

"When was the last time you saw a decent man walking 'round here, Frederick? The war's made 'em scarce — or angry — or in a hurry in a way I don't like."

"Don't blame the war," he said, his voice turning scratchy.

"No, you're right. Not the war, then. But the only gentlemen to catch my interest in the last year and some walked into that there office and asked, in a veddy proper accent, to talk to you about Marion. And I don't date married men. And I won't try to compete against Marion for any man."

"Naw," he agreed.

"The good ones are already taken," she added, turning her head back to look at him and added, "taken, and takin' to being fruitful."

"Howzat?" he asked like a man suddenly hard of hearing.

"We run a breeding farm, Fred-O. If you think we all don't already know that you and Bessie are at it again, then so help me. Will this be _her_ last?"

"Well now _that_, Sister," he replied, like brushing her barb off his shoulder, suppressing a sly smile, "I could not say."

"Congratulations," she said, her tone that of a sibling punch to the arm.

"And to you, too," he replied, taking notice with a breeder's eye of the promising foal nuzzling into the warm underbelly of Lardner's Ring.

* * *

><p><strong>BRAZIL – private Nazi émigré nightclub – 1954 - <strong>Allen Dale was standing at the washbasin and looking for the towels in the men's lavatory, the attendant not present at the moment to hand him one, when, in the mirror glass' reflection he saw the door behind him swing widely open and Geis Gisbonnhoffer storm into the washroom.

Allen took an involuntary step backward, toward the countertop, trying his best to get out of the way in a room meant only for three men at most to stand calmly within it. Not for one man to stand and another rage violently through the stalls to assure himself they were empty. (Which they were.)

"Where is she?" Gisbonnhoffer demanded when he was done with his check. He jabbed his first finger down toward the floor as though he were making a point with it upon an invisible desktop. Spittle shot from his lips with the shockingly unhinged intensity of his unexpected-by-Allen demand.

"El'ri?" Allen asked, utterly confused at Geis' behavior – him so instantly muddled that he had no time to reconnect with his moments-ago rage toward the man. "Reckon she's in the ladies, if you can't find her," Allen replied, warily taking note of the wildness in Geis' eyes, the sudden disorder of the former lieutenant's hair, the near-twitchiness of his posture.

He felt very suddenly the hobbling injury to his foot. Saw that his cane he had leaned over by the door – the pathway to which Gisbonnhoffer blocked with his person. He was effectively trapped by this man, and limited in any defense of himself.

"Not Kommandant's daughter, you idiot!" Gisbonnhoffer half-roared, a hand in his hair, seeming now to notice it needed to be pushed back and smoothed. Or maybe he just needed something to tug at. "Marion," he said, and the word, rendered by him urgently, dropped out of his mouth like flour in a sack, making a soft, dull-but-weighted thud on the floor between them. "Where is she? Have you seen her? Did she return?"

Allen looked up at Geis as though he were some giant escaped from a fairytale: a dangerous creature let loose upon a world he could not possibly understand. He marked the dilation in the man's eyes, the tension in his lips, heard the ragged breathing like that of a man running a series of enforced sprints.

"Marion?" Allen asked, growing more keenly aware of being boxed into this single-exit room with no easy way out, his eyes glancing to the side, breaking eye contact with Geis, though there was no one else present with which to share such a look. He thought his voice should sound rough and filled-with-emotion, but mostly is just sounded rushed, like he was trying to say her name quickly and be done with it.

"Yes. Marion," Geis insisted, further questions spilling out. "Has she returned to the island? To Barnsdale? Is she well?" His face was now all-over concern, as though he were asking about a family member he had not been able to visit in some time. Anxious, attentive. Eager. "Is she — if I knew she'd returned I'd travel under my _own_ documents back to Guernsey," he referenced his original Reich-issued identification papers in his real name. "In half a heartbeat."

Allen felt like he could not properly process what was happening. He caught a partial glimpse of his face in the mirror. Incredulity and fascination were at war in his expression. He felt like he had been set upon by kidnappers and left by them, trapped in a madhouse.

"Marion," he spoke, and his voice became ever-more used to the word, "_Lady_ Marion, back on Guernsey?" He watched Geis closely for any reaction, any moment where violence might erupt in his direction. His senses were screaming with readiness should such an attack be sprung. His mouth could not decide which shape to take as he asked, "Wot are you on about?"

Again; anxious, concerned. "Wh- Surely you will have seen her. Did she not come back, then? To Hoffer Haus? Did she go elsewhere?"

"_Hoffer_ Haus?" Allen asked, a deer in headlights; half-stunned, half-hypnotized. He felt his chin draw his head back, away from Geis, in distrust and uncertainty.

"My estate," Geis informed him as though it were something of which he ought already to have been aware. "My estate at Barnsdale."

Allen didn't even try to counter that one. "Geis," he said, softly, like a man trying to gentle a rabid dog in order to get close enough to put it down. "You had Marion killed. She's not comin' back. Not to Guernsey. Not to anywhere."

All anxiety and intensity fell from Gisbonnhoffer's face. "Killed?" Disbelief. "What? _Marion_?" There was no other word for his expression than that of horror.

Allen pointed toward the lavatory's exit door, indicating the club beyond it. "Eleri saw the body. Saw it there, with Tyr's."

"_Tears_?" Gisbonnhoffer asked, and his red-rimmed eyes looked as though they might start producing some of their own.

"No," Allen clarified. "Tyr's. Joss Tyr's. Cabaret Psychic."

"The bod-dy?" Gisbonnhoffer stuttered. "No. No. There was no body," he seemed to have hit upon something, the horror in his face lessened. He now looked more of a man trying to explain himself. "Only a doppelganger."

Allen's reply was heavy with suspicion of the unfamiliar word. "A doppel-what?"

"A lookalike," Geis almost whispered it, shaking his head back and forth. "What she would have seen was a lookalike."

Allen's eyes snapped open over-widely. "You killed someone that _looked_ like Lady Marion?"

Here Gisbonnhoffer stumbled to explain himself. "We had… She had — _she was the Nightwatch_, Allen," he said with conviction in the shock value of such a confession. As he spoke the words he brought his arm up to the wall, to place his hand against it, and rest heavily upon it, further trapping Allen.

His face could not have been more than a hand's-breadth away from Allen's nose.

For a moment Gisbonnhoffer's head sagged, and hung limply downward. "She was the bloody Nightwatch," he repeated to his feet upon the floor. "Kommandant ordered me to get rid of the evidence."

Allen heard what he was being told, the unbelievableness of it - but the deciphering of it, even for one as quick as he, was slowing him up. "And so you pinned the Nightwatch on Prinzer's pet, Tyr."

Geis went on, like a man on trial, a man struggling to explicate himself. "But I _could_ not let Marion go free. Not after that." His brows knit together in deep puzzlement, still working through his decisions of a decade ago. "After what she had done to me. How she had fooled me. So I sent her away, to the Fatherland. To a labor camp."

Allen felt as though every organ in his chest had bottomed-out. No heartbeat, no breath, no way to even react to such a statement. He was nothing. He was wiped blank of reaction or response. Opening his eyes from where they had blinked seemed an all-consuming task.

But yet his tongue still agreed to speak. It proved thick and sluggish. "A camp? You sent her away to be killed?"

"No!" And here Geis' protest came dangerously close to the wild demeanor with which he had entered the lavatory. "Not a _killer_ camp. A labor camp." He seemed to feel there was a great disparity between the two destinations. "But I — I was angry, and I did not, I forgot to — I cannot recall her numbers. I do not remember her numbers and so, I could not — even once I wished to — I could not trace…" His eyes constricted and Allen watched as tears of frustration, perhaps of madness, began to spill over onto his cheeks. Yet he did not weep, nor make sounds of one crying. Only, water spilled in rivulets down his cheeks, drawing attention to the folded wrinkles under his eyes, the pallor (no longer disguised by the low light out in the club) upon his cheeks.

The lavatory door swung open again with the return of the attendant's, and Allen seized the opportunity to slip away from the place where he had been pinned between Gisbonnhoffer and the far wall, diving under Gisbonnhoffer's raised arm, and stepped it to the door, and then quickly out and away.

He shot over to the club exit and the coat check, and had Eleri not been there waiting for him already with their coats, he would likely have left without her, despite his earlier promise to meet her at that spot; left without her and without his coat and hat as well. As it was he had given up his cane for lost during his frantic exit from the loo.

Eleri had not yet gotten a single word out – not even a greeting - when he aimed her for the club door and the night beyond it, and she must've read something in his face or sensed something in his bearing that kept her from asking any questions or speaking until such time as they were back in a cab, headed briskly for his nearby hotel.

It was all he could do not to glue his gaze unwaveringly to the rear glass of the car and ensure they were not being followed.

**...TBC...**


	24. Chapter 21 - If You Believed In Me

**ENGLAND - London's West End - Mayfair - Clem, Lord Nighten's Georgian town house – 1955 - **Lady Miranda (formerly Lady Nighten) found herself, more often than not these days, looking for a chair in the sunlight. That glowing warmth her bones seemed to crave more greatly than they perhaps had in the past.

The townhouse had no solarium, no conservatory of glass and leafy plants, and the windows were on the whole, flat. And so it was only for short times sun found its way into any of the rooms.

She thought for a moment about going down from her second floor sitting room and descending to the library, its tall, eleven-foot windows perhaps better suited to such a search. But then, here it came: the heat and the illumination.

It would not last in this particular spot beyond the quarter-hour, she knew, but still she welcomed it and basked. Yes, she supposed she basked in it for as long as she might.

And here was Ettlestone's replacement, Flynn, at the door to her sitting room, announcing an unexpected caller.

It was not her afternoon to be in to accept social calls, but times were changing (her son was always reminding her) and the younger generation paid little attention to the gentility or decorum of the old ways. The caller was announced as a Mr. Ainsley, originally a newspaper man by trade.

One could hardly expect _him_ to keep to tradition.

"Good afternoon, Lady Miranda," he began, but she found she had little patience for pleasantries in this particular moment, her basking interrupted.

"You were not expected," she reminded him, though smoothly and with a tone perfected in saying the unpleasant without provoking offense in those used to more direct language (as a newspaper man would be). But the disapproval was there, all the same.

"No. No, I was not. So said your man," he gestured after the withdrawing Flynn. He was a man nearing middle age, serious but direct, the cut and cloth of his suit respectable but hardly posh.

"You have news?" she asked, spying an attaché case.

"Yes," he agreed, his own eyes traveling to the case. "News."

She inclined her head, wondering if she were to have to pull every subsequent statement out of him like extricating hook and line from a caught fish.

He drew the familiar (to her) pages of a certain manuscript from the case.

"It _is_ extraordinary," he began.

Her brows raised in just the acceptable amount at such a compliment.

"I daresay it is one of the foremost works of biography in a generation. Perhaps, two."

Her brows held steady. Ainsley's tone was hardly one of triumph, no matter the words he spoke.

"But we will not publish it," he continued, dropping the other shoe, and referencing his publishing house.

"Why?" she asked, her tone, from long practice, reasonable, no matter the emotions (and myriad responses) immediately leaping to the fore of her mind.

She had not reached to take the offered manuscript (which was very thick and quite heavy-and also unbound, making it a devil to extend to her and have to keep holding up without acceptance).

He stood and moved to place it upon a nearby occasional table.

Ainsley noticed as he did so that she followed its movements with her eyes, but her body made no move to go toward it.

"We are old friends, yes?" he asked her, as always aware of both the importance of the person he was addressing, as well as the appealingly handsome face such person wore. And aware, more so today (after having read the manuscript he had arrived to return) than ever before, of the sophisticated intelligence behind said face.

"We are friends," she partially agreed.

"It is my suggestion," he began, wishing for a drawing room eloquence his own education had denied him, "_as your friend_, that you take the manuscript and box it. Save it for your family. For Sir Edward's descendants. It is a significant work, and masterfully written. Perhaps, in a few decades…"

'Decades?' her brows seemed to ask.

"…it could again be presented for publication, perhaps it might then be accepted."

"Perhaps?" she asked, though it seemed unneeding of reply. "And why should I not simply contact another publisher? Or pay to have it published by a press on my own?"

"No," he settled for the directness he knew best. "You must not do that."

"If you will not take it," her words seemed to hide a rueful chuckle, "you mean no one to have it? Keep my work-my blood-in a drawer, and show it only to family, as though it were a private photograph album with no larger context? No larger historical import?" Her words could have sounded defensive, or even hurt. But instead the way in which they were spoken made them grander, somehow. Reasonable. It was a trick which he had seen the best MPs invoke when addressing parliament. It was a lordly tone. Wise and dignified. One would not risk tilting with such a tone.

"No matter how you phrase your pretty compliments, Ainsley," she went on, "that is insulting."

"Very well," he replied, as though she had not employed such a manner with him. "If we are to speak so, I will be frank." (Though Lady Miranda had done nothing to illustrate or request true frankness.) "Due to its length it is quite obviously two volumes. I could, without reservation, publish the first. It is meticulously researched and footnoted. What it has to say and put forth about Lord Nighten's public political life can be vetted by multiple sources living, and numerous other print publications."

He swallowed.

"It is what would be in the second volume that is conjecture, though you do an impressively stylish job of trying to distract your readers from it."

"Conjecture?" Her posture, already ramrod straight, seemed to grow sharper, straighter-potentially dangerous as razor.

"Oh, some of it is fine, uninspired but fine," he was not unaware of how what he had to say was going to sound. "However, from the moment Lord Nighten departs for your island estate, you've naught - as far as I can see - to corroborate your timeline of events, or even the events themselves. You claim he was tricked into recanting his monograph. That a German Lieutenant was to blame in his death, and other things I will not insult you by further listing here. And yet you have no proof of such truths. Nothing evidential. A work such as this - and dealing as it does with part of a public figure's heretofore unknown (and greatly speculated upon) life - will be a subject of great scrutiny, of great interest by those wishing to champion Lord Nighten, _and_ by those wishing to further vilify him."

Her posture remained rigid. "And you do not think it exonerates him?" But her voice shifted away from coming-on-imperiousness. A shade of curiosity entered it, Possibly (though Ainsley did not know her well enough to hear it), disappointment.

"I believe that, unfortunately, it is written by his former wife, who parted ways with him over that very monograph when it was popular to do so, and who then later - when it became likewise popular to support his words - recanted her earlier position and did so. And then, now, in the wake of the war, has spent more than a few years assembling a staggering 'life' of the man that casts him in a role of nothing less than that of a national hero." He hoped his face showed the sympathy he felt for that wife.

"And you doubt the truth of what was written?"

"No. But I doubt that it can easily be proven. Such works, absent the input or testimony of the subject, usually require sworn affidavits by contributors, when stories and facts cannot be otherwise researched and seconded. And I sit here and ask you, honestly - _can_ you provide such documentation for what you have written of his time on the Channel Islands, preceding his death?"

"I have letters in his hand -" she began to answer.

"Only until the Occupation began?"

"Yes. The post no longer ran after that."

"Naturally."

"I can provide at least two affidavits -"

"Please let me stop you there, my Lady. I can guess that one of them would likely be from a certain MI-6 operative, and I will inform you - as he would also have to - that the Ministry has not released any of their war operatives to sign _any_ such documents, as their war work and whereabouts come under the National Secrets Act, and shall remain so for the foreseeable future."

"Very well, then -"

"And the second affidavit you would offer me is from a certain woman whom, it is known, moved from being your ladiesmaid to being the mother of your son's bastard to - now wearing the title 'Lady'. The press would have a field day at the mere suggestion, and drag her through their muck, which if you care about her, or your son, at all, you will not ask her to do in the name of this. Even so, two would not be enough. Was there not _any_ staff in your home, there, that might be contacted? The butler?"

"Clun?" Even he could hear the revulsion in it. "One hopes he has slunk off to die of shame."

"Anyone in the nearby villages with whom Lord Nighten would have been in contact?"

She made no response.

"None comes to mind? Then, among the occupying force. Had he acquaintances amongst them?"

She restrained herself from snorting. "It is clear you have read the manuscript. Can you really ask such a question? My husband's life was very small in those days, and shared only with… With…" It was as though her throat had grown unexpectedly dry.

"Your daughter. Yes," he gave a nod, closing his eyes for a moment in acknowledgement of her loss. "These works do sometimes come down to a single piece missing. The right person's testimony that can authenticate the whole."

But she was uninterested in attempting to brainstorm with him over who that (living) person might be. "Do you believe what I have written is true?"

"I do," he agreed without reservation. "And in those few places where one must depend upon conjecture, I do not doubt the conclusions you draw are as real and valid as those Lord Nighten himself would have drawn. But I do not wish to see you and your family plunged into the unforgiving national spotlight again. Even if we went forward and published under a pseudonym, I fear the truth would come out, and the papers would not be kind to you and _your_ legacy, and what you are trying to do here. So I say to you; it's for a drawer."

"There is no other option?"

"None short of your traveling in person to the place it all occurred." He allowed for a moment to pass, realizing he had been offered neither food or drink. "Have you not returned?"

"No." It was said almost as if she were saying, 'hush'.

"Perhaps you might consider taking a trip, revisiting the family estate there, putting advertisements in the local papers, or distributing handbills, or however one might accomplish trying to draw out witnesses to Sir Edward's last days and his life upon the island."

"And if I told you I could not go?"

"You've a grandson, now, have you not? A resident of this island?"

She closed her eyes slowly in assent, without giving a verbal response.

"No doubt visiting him would be an excellent place to start. And if you cannot find other contacts, one would assume he, at least, would wish to read his grandfather's 'life'."

It was only now that she stood, but rather than walking toward the occasional table upon which he had laid the manuscript, she stepped over towards the phonograph, and lifted its lid, seeming to contemplate the record resting within.

Feeling himself dismissed, and having stood to his feet when she had risen from her chair, Ainsley aimed himself toward the sitting room door. "I am sorry I could not bring you better news," he said to her back. "It really is a work of significant import and faculty."

"But it is written out of the proper time," she spoke his summation back to him, without turning 'round. "And I will not live to see the day it may be published."

Though she would not see his gesture, he gave a nod anyway. "Good luck on your island," he wished her, knowing she had given him no indication that she would so travel, and feeling it very likely he would not soon be welcomed into this home again.

"Good afternoon," Miranda said, knowing Flynn would have been keeping watch outside the sitting room door passageway, ready to see Ainsley to the front door when he went through, her attention to him no longer needed. He was a guest - if a business-related one - and he was leaving. His need of her, and of her manuscript, concluded.

She looked back down to the record she had indeed been contemplating, directing the needle to drop onto it, the recording of American Billie Holiday singing that war-time anthem, _I'll Be Seeing You_. She had had her ladiesmaid acquire it for her some time ago.

It had been after she had overheard a bit of loose gossip. Lady Havilland, it had been, not unusually telling tales. This one had been of Robin Oxley, Earl of Huntingdon. No doubt Lady Havilland in her age and easy forgetfulness for certain connections in the past had un-remembered Marion and Oxley's connection.

There had been a party, or perhaps it had been at a nightclub (Miranda found she could not recall that particular). Oxley had been dancing with Augusta MacNoughton, considered by most to be a lovely young woman, herself youngest of the society war widows, and still not remarried. _I'll Be Seeing You_ had begun to play, and before a full ten notes of it had been struck, Oxley had gone stock-still on the dance floor, his partner's hand unclasped, arms dropped to his sides. And without so much as a word to Augusta, after several long moments of stone-like behavior, walked off the dance floor and out of the establishment like a man in a trance.

'How very queer,' Lady Havilland had pronounced it. 'But his mother, long ago, was given to bouts of eccentricity. Her suitors, of course, thought her temperament jolly. But they were bewitched by her face and fortune. Why, even Sir Robert himself grew queer during the war. One ought not be surprised."

_No_, Miranda had had to agree - though for different reasons entirely. _One ought not be surprised_. It was only one among what used to be rather many tales of Oxley once the government had officially returned him to life.

But it had struck Miranda deeply. She _knew_ she had to hear that song, instinctively believing the significance of it that had so paralyzed Oxley had to do with Marion.

And when she _had_ heard it, as she listened to it now, thinking of Edward, of the island, of returning there - she could only think of her lost child as it played: "_I'll be seeing you…in that small café, the park across the way/The children's carousel/The chestnut tree, the wishing well._"

Could only think of everything she had lost.

Everything she had seen those islands take from her.

* * *

><p><strong>1912.<strong> **Her bedchamber in Mayfair, large and airy.** Tastefully appointed and spotlessly clean. Except for the woman in the bed.

She is twenty-one years old, a comfortably married woman and mother, a member of the nobility, and a convicted felon. She married the year the Conciliation Bill passed, when what had been hoped for, what had been promised and worked toward - universal suffrage - had been politically manipulated into wording that in the end disenfranchised more than it would include.

She looks a misused cinder girl - or someone treated far worse. Even the lengthy soak and bath she had been given upon her return had not removed all signs and signifiers of her time incarcerated for disturbing a political meeting and picketing the candidate, for later that afternoon marching to the polling place and attempting to cast a ballot in the election.

Her hair, though washed, had not been fully brushed out. It was half a tangled, matted mess. Her nails, though soaked clean, were broken and split, blood pooled under several. She would practice and play the harp again no time soon. Her skin pulled tight across her face from the dehydration. Her bones aching from the cold of the stone cell floor, and her insides damaged and wounded from her jailers attempts at force-feeding her.

The clothes she had arrived home in had immediately been burnt before they could even touch the floor in the kitchen where she had entered the house through the service door.

She refused, as always, to give her rightful name and title to the arresting officers, using, instead, the name of a nobody. In doing this she had surrender her rights to being kept 'first division'; upper class women who enjoyed the privileges (even as prisoners) not to be searched upon entry, to order their own food, entertain visitors, to write and even to publish. Women less likely to be force-fed were they to hunger strike while serving out their sentences.

She refused to acknowledge any 'right' to such luxuries, preferring as always to write and publish once she was returned home. To write and publish about treatments in the lower divisions: women who had so much more to risk and so less a bully pulpit than the upper class. _Their_ homes had no staff to tend the families and children left behind during a wife and mother's jail time. And often a loss of income, too, if the woman had employment in or out of the home. Women who may well be functionally illiterate to the point they could barely write, and certainly not expect to publish primitively-rendered accounts of their time imprisoned. Women who needed not only a vote, but a voice.

After her time away, she had arrived home Kate Bridges, and it always took some time to again settle in to being Lady Miranda Nighten.

"You have come straightaway," she chid Edward, old enough to be her father at twenty-two years her senior, her voice weak and out-of-breath.

She was lying face down, into the pillows, and he stopped short of asking if this was in an effort to accommodate some unseen wound or hurt. She never cared to discuss her physical ailments after serving a sentence. Not until the time came to write about them.

He had to incline his head toward her just to understand her. She had been sleeping when he arrived, and had no way of knowing he had been with her, as she slept, an hour gone.

"Not so straightaway as was my wont," he assured her, his tone peaceful, benevolent, lovely. It felt perfect simply to be able to speak to her. "You have been in-and-out, Nurse says. You will not know how long I held off in coming once I got the word."

"Is there to be a vote today?" she asked, anxiousness coming in to her voice. "You-you mustn't miss a vote. Not over this." Her eyes were sluggish, sleep and rest still pulling hard upon her.

"No, my heart," he promised. "No vote today, only meant-to-be-rousing posturing from both sides. It was impossible to sit through knowing you-you who are really _doing_-were here, returned from Holloway."

"But you spoke?" Her eyes were staying open longer, her tone growing steadier, though remaining weak, and rough from the nasogastric tube's damage to her throat.

"I did," he nodded with a smile.

"I want to hear it."

He let himself laugh, because she was here, in his care, in their home.

He had not laughed in weeks. "You cannot be serious."

"I am nothing if not gravely serious." And there were those eyes, that composure, that level of 'daring you' in whose wake he was powerless, and happily so.

"Don't say 'grave'," he said, sounding of a child's disapproving nanny, but meaning it. He did not like to tempt the Fates, even within the secure and steadfast white marble walls of his own home.

"You must have Cook send food to Clara," Miranda said, recalling her cellmate and friend, her tired mind circular and disorganized in her mistreatment-caused illness.

"Yes. Of course."

"She was brave. So very brave. They were much worse to her than to me. I don't know why they pick their targets so. Choosing the weaker sisters."

She always spoke of them that way, Kate Bridges' sisters.

"Perhaps they could see that in hurting her they could hurt you."

"The conditions are worse than I recalled. Really, you must send plenty of food to her and her family. If they do not receive enough I think she will set it all aside for the children. _Plenty of fruit_." Her mind circled back 'round. "Be sure…plenty of fruit."

Having been through this before he did not worry at her inability to speak linearly. It would return to her with time and rest. "And you were released and then went to her home, as we had planned?"

"Yes," she agreed, her mind grinding slowly through recent events. "Though I-I paid for a cab. I did not think she could manage the trip otherwise."

"It does not look as though _you_ could have managed it otherwise," he offered, though he knew it was overstepping their agreement to dwell on her condition after such jailings only insofar as necessary.

"But I would have," she replied, her eyes looking up at him from where she lay on the bed like a burr among the down pillows and costly sheeting.

"Yes. I know."

"Plenty of fruit," she was back to Clara. "And perhaps a blanket or two. Send your valet, Ettlestone. The house can manage without him for the afternoon…" She was at attempting to schedule staff, now, as though she had not been just released from a notorious prison where she had spent the past weeks, her time there culminating in a hunger strike. "Have him look in on the conditions he finds there and report back. There may be more assistance they need."

She closed her eyes for long moments as he looked on, happy with her presence, not needing her awake or vocal. Only, needing her.

Abruptly her eyes opened. "On what did you speak?" she asked.

"Oh, taxes." This in-and-out was not unusual. He knew better than to waste breath on telling her to rest. Thought and action were the two best anodynes for this patient.

And he had ever been an indulgent physician. (Once she had seen an _actual_ physician.)

"I want to hear it."

"Hmm. Not today," he said, his voice tired in the denial.

"_Why_ not today?"

He looked at her, at her bright grey eyes, washed almost entirely of their usual leaning toward blue. At the lips of her mouth where even the salve put upon them could not disguise what trauma they had been put through. Thought of her trying to make her way home with only Clara, another similarly mistreated. Of his wife trying to engage a cab for herself, even as she was so visibly ill. He looked at her, and found along with his pride, that he was jealous. "Because I don't want to look at my injured wife and discourse on taxes and whether rising them is a good idea."

Jealous, today, that the fight Miranda had chosen was one that could be taken on physically. He had known a soldier's life in his younger days. Understood, in that life, the relish one might take in a battle - even in a defeat. And now he knew a statesman's life. And some days working in words alone did not seem like enough.

"Tell me, then," she asked, and even through her discomfort he could see that shift, however slight, in her expression. That shift he had first identified so long ago, that shift that had given him hope that even among all those other men closer in age and tastes to herself, that she might love him, too.

"Tell you what?"

"What has upset you? And don't say it is the sight of me in this bed. You have seen it before. Long ago we agreed..."

He didn't snap at her in his reply, but he did stop her from going on. "I want to have your ladiesmaid pack for us to go away. Starting tomorrow, or as soon as you can manage it."

"Go away?" she was puzzled. "But our fight is here. Our _triumph_ will be here," she told him, curious with confusion, and he could see that she was thinking about try to rise to a seated position in the bed. "Leave London? _Why_?"

"Because it is not only taxes upon which they pontificate," he confessed what direction the Houses had gone in since her imprisonment. "There is a group among them discussing a new method: 'prisoners' temporary discharge for ill health' some are calling it. The same angry men, worried that in enfranchising you they somehow will find themselves the victim of redundancy. They want to pass a motion that when a suffragist is imprisoned, and then enacts a hunger strike or something similarly damaging to their body that they might release her. Until such time she recovers her health. And then…"

"No-"

"They will re-arrest her and set her to serving the rest of her sentence."

The incredulity showing on her face must surely have been something like his own at first hearing this new obstacle. "But that cycle could go on…"

"For years. Like a cat toying with a mouse it's caught. What drawn-out agony. It allows the sitting government to say they do not participate in the cruelty of force-feeding hunger-striking inmates. And that if a suffragist dies at home resultant of their time in prison, the government is not responsible." He did not realize he had stood. "It is the worst kind of political semantics." He took a breath. "But it is gaining support."

"But I-I can't leave."

"My heart, I'm not asking you to give it up," he assured her. "I won't ask that. But every soldier knows when it is time to regroup, time to convalesce from his battle wounds so that in the next skirmish he has strength on his side. That is all. Let us go away and let you heal. Together. We'll write. On your time in Holloway."

She let out a scoff. "I am thinking that once we accomplish our goal of the vote I am become peculiarly positioned to immediately pursue protesting the unacceptable conditions of our prisons."

Without needing to be asked, he stepped to a nearby drawer and withdrew paper, ink and pen from it, ready for any dictation.

"The words they use for you, the terms they sling at one as though one were no more than a representation of their indelicacies. These things they say, that they mock. They wish to define me - to define all women by these indelicacies. But how can I not take just the same things as great strengths? As from such indelicacy springs forth life, and nurture? Are they so ignorant? And if they are, who do we have to blame but ourselves? Ourselves who craft and support and fund the society-the very places-that so shape them? Was not every man on earth born of woman? Carried in and pushed forth into being by those very indelicacies they now wish to brand dirty and foul? To tag me as nothing more than a possessor of such a part?" She stopped abruptly in her speech and cut herself off. "Oh Edward, Edward! Ettlestone must call on Clara. He must-"

"I have already had my personal physician sent 'round, my heart. I expect a note from him in the afternoon post as to her condition. And that of her children…and the fruit."

She did not register his speech, though, her mind jumping again back to the plan he wished to make for them in light of the new turn the politics of suffrage had encountered.

"You are planning to visit your island!" she abruptly intuited as to his choice of destination were they to leave London. "Why do you love it so?" She looked at him and smiled as though she were contemplating why he might love a new puppy, or a particular painting at the National Gallery. "I confess I have yet to experience the tremendous pull of the charms that seem to hold you so captivated by it."

He did not directly answer her. "I find myself wishing England would remember she, too, is an island-subject to the whim and weather of the larger world."

"You speak of England as though not including yourself amongst her."

For the first time since he had arrived in the room, his eyes floated away from where his wife lay upon the bed. Out into the middle distance, where remembered horizons and Channel vistas displayed in his minds' eye.

"Oh, I am more than half-Islander. I have ever felt so. And _we_ are a breed apart. Neither English, nor French. Norman, yes. But the kings of Normandy have been absent from us long ago."

She knew, of course, that he had spent most of his early years on Guernsey at the family estate, there. As other nobility might ensconce their offspring in the country with nannies, so Edward's parents had left him to grow up far away from London, until he was of an age to send away to school. And even then, at every possible opportunity he returned to Guernsey, and the home he had known there. "An islander looks to the water," he went on, wishing he could explain his love of the place better, "he knows already everything there is to see (and how slowly it changes) on his small island. And the water and wave is a capricious mistress. Intoxicating as she vacillates. Embraces you one day and attacks you the next. But still you love her. Still you long to see her again, to sleep at night upon the stone that is your island as though it were the cradle she rocks for her children."

"And you can have it both ways, then?" Miranda asked, her voice gaining no strength, but the playful tone for a moment cloaking its exhaustion. "Mother and lover, this sea of yours?"

"And why not?" he challenged her with a smile of his own. "Water is life, is it not? London will always be here - in some form. Certainly history has established that. London may do without you until you are healed."

Knowing he would have to offer her some occupation other than merely recuperating, he went on. "We may give speeches and produce pamphlets for the Islanders as you convalesce. You shall have the writing desk in the sunroom for your work." He gestured to the paragraph or so he had already taken down in dictation from her.

She watched him, having to look up to where he stood through her lashes from her place upon the bed. The expressions that played on his features as he talked about the island charmed and intrigued her, as they always did. "And so you invite me, your wife, to visit your mistress - also my _true_ mother-in-law?"

He smiled at this, a breath away from more laughter. She was in no condition to speak so saucily. To even think about the play inherent in her words. But it was so like her. That vigor that was never far away. That passion like a gas chandelier: turned high sometimes, others low, but never extinguished. Always burning, threatening to flare.

"There is nowhere I go that I do not wish you with me, my heart," he told her, as sure of it as he had been the day they were introduced. "And nothing I do that is not improved by your presence."

* * *

><p>The song was over, the needle gliding back, away from the phonograph record. <em>Could she do it?<em>

_Could she travel to Guernsey?_

She knew she had the ability to do so. She knew Clem had worked to restore Barnsdale House after the war. That it was (by all accounts and reports) a lovely, welcoming home once again. She knew that Mitch Bonchurch and Eva and Seth lived there happily most months of the year, until the season for holidays when Clem and Claire went down to stay with Seth and visit, and Mitch and Eva came to look in on Bonchurch Downs.

She knew Mitch and Eva would not mind her coming and staying with them - though it was not the time of year for holidaying. She would no doubt be given her former suite in which to stay, though she had no idea how she might find it decorated, now.

It was the gumption to do it she wondered if she still had.

She was sixty-four years old, after all. The color in her once-dark hair was but a memory. Could she step off the boat onto the Guernsey pier, or in doing so would _she_ be Robin Oxley - frozen on a dance floor as he heard a certain song, instantly oblivious to his present partner - caught within the past, falling back, back into the sorrow and loss located there?

_Edward._

_Marion_.

So much to grieve, to be ashamed for, the ways in which she had failed them. Failed herself.

_The Channel_. How many times during the war had she cursed it? Did it remember? Would it allow her safe passage?

And the islanders - did _they_ remember her? The wife (and then former wife) who had stayed away, who had escaped their fate and the fate of her own family? Would they even agree to talk with her about Edward?

_Could she do it?_

Oh, Kate Bridges would have done it. Kate Bridges would have cleverly found her way to Guernsey even in the height of the Occupation. Kate Bridges always had gumption to spare.

But she had been put in a box all those years ago after the Epsom Derby, Kate Bridges had, after the decision that fighting for the Cause had become too dangerous. But perhaps Kate wasn't dead, really, after all. Just as she, Miranda, was not dead.

A person that could still fear emotional pain was not dead, she promised herself.

A person who could still feel anger at a manuscript being rejected was not dead, she added to the list.

She rang for Flynn, giving him the necessary directions of arrangements to make, and with whom to liaise about such a trip. She asked to have her ladiesmaid sent up to speak with her regarding the necessary packing at a quarter-past.

The sun had more than left the sitting room by now. It was only a memory, a brief interval of light and heat in which she had been able to bask.

She thought of Edward's island, of her memories of the sun, there.

Remembered that Barnsdale House's sunroom had a perfectly-sized writing desk.

* * *

><p><strong>South America – BRASIL – Salvador da Bahia - <strong>**1954 – **They were less than a quarter of an hour away from the lobby door of the Hotel Coracao in the moving taxi. The night had fallen around them, and only the occasional lit signage that they passed gave illumination into the interior of the cab's rear seat.

When light did reach them, it brillianted off the starry sequins in Eleri's dress, seeming to cut into his eyes, and made Allen wish he'd never seen that gown, never looked at her a moment in it.

He rubbed at that certain spot on the back of his head; a nervous, jittery gesture. He still very clearly could recall what _Marion_ had been wearing that night in the Guernsey harbor garage just before she nobbled him with the tyre iron, that last time he had seen her upon this earth. The very same clothes Eleri had reported to him as being worn by the corpse _she_ had seen at Treeton.

Unbidden, his mind flashed an image of Gisbonnhoffer's eyes as he had confessed to his lookalike scheme. The pale to overly-pink skin stretched thin in some places, wrinkled with age and worry in others. The almost rheumy water in their sockets, the imminent threat of both hysteria and tears they telegraphed. The way his breath would catch, jittery, as he spoke desperately, confident in exonerating himself.

Allen stopped himself from looking over toward Eleri now, from wanting to take his hands and peel the frock away from her skin like the poisoned gown it surely was: poisoned by the touch of Gisbonnhoffer; rotting the seams, amazingly still absent any of her life's blood — but still – Nazi ways did not change so much, no matter the decade.

Instead, he stared ahead, wary of speech (had he had it in him to offer up any) lest the cabbie overhear the only words he could possibly have for Elerinne Vaiser. (Words of anger and despair and horror. Words about Marion.) Lest he begin the saying of it and snap in two right there, with no power to get himself into the semi-privacy of his room before devolving into his own version of the slavering madman Gisbonnhoffer had become before his eyes in the club's lavatory.

Instead, holding himself together - his mind numb and stalled out, absent its usually quick-fire connections and thoughts - was the best he could manage.

* * *

><p>She noticed, of course, his oddly vigilant posture, his portentous silence. It was their last evening together, and the moment with Lieutenant Gisbonnhoffer on the dance floor had upset Allen, of a certain, but Eleri knew nothing of what had passed between the two men in the loo, not even that Gisbonnhoffer had followed Allen in there.<p>

His gaze elsewhere, Allen heard and felt the rustle of her clothing as she shifted in order to reach into her pocketbook.

From it she withdrew a cigarette case and a cylindrical silver lighter, fancy stones encircling its base, and placing the heel of her palm up to her chin, proceeded to light a cigarette held in the Continental way between her thumb and smaller fingers.

He would not have thought his mind, so overwhelmed and gobsmacked by all that had just passed would have had the space to notice it, but he marked that her hand shook tremulously in the accomplishment of her so-ordinary task, absent the white of the single glove she had removed to keep it from a tobacco stain as she had first tamped down the fag against the closed case.

Now watching her, warily, out of the corner of his eye, he saw another case in his mind's eye; this one ever-in-motion, flipped around hand, over and between knuckles.

_Ox's knuckles. Ox's case, for so long ever-with him. So well-practiced he was with it, even his broken finger could not blunder in the acrobatics._

The lighter went out on her twice, and she flicked to re-light it. Its flame danced erratically until the cigarette took to it. But Eleri was not much of a smoker, carrying the case more to offer smokes from it than to satisfy any real habit of her own.

She took one short puff and extended it towards him.

There in the dark, he felt that tiny, slender fag improbably swell to fill the gap of space between them, felt the embers alight upon the tip of it like as though their heat and combustion occurred pushed up against his very cheek.

Everything felt as close, as unpleasantly near as had Gisbonnhoffer claustrophobically blocking him from exiting that loo.

_The invitation to a toast. _

_The offer of a fag._

He was besieged by old, well-worn memories of Anya's dresses, how surprisingly nice they had been in contrast to the cruelty and universal want of her surroundings. In contrast to her imprisonment. How seeing a woman in something pretty and not at all shabby had always been a particular treat for him during the war. How he had worked to shelve that feeling when he was around her.

How he had offered her, _how many?_ one-hundred unimportant drags on his cigs in the brief moments they two interacted. How she had always refused them. And how he had for so long (until it was too late, really) had no idea the toxic hands of Gisbonnhoffer were all over those jolly frocks, burning Annie, hurting her with every day, every moment she lived under his power.

He could not accept the cigarette from Eleri, letting a lateral move of his head turn her offer of it away.

In response she reached for him, a hand coming up, extended toward his forearm where he had rested it (not lightly) upon his leg. At the near-touch of her, he pulled his hand and elbow up and away, closer to the core of him, as though he could not bear the weight of her palm against his coat. And after that coat, against the well-pressed shirt inside it, against his skin.

"What is it?" she asked (quite reasonably), confusion painting her question. "Is it that he cut in? That I went _with_ him?" She looked at him out of the side of her eyes as well, trepidatious, trying to choose her words carefully, weigh what effect they might have on him.

* * *

><p>Oh, but he had been a right arse <em>that<em> night in '43. His cheek was such that it would have served him right had he been outed and arrested on the spot. But it was early in the unit's game, and such larks yet wore the air of excitement without immediate consequence (at least insofar as he was willing to acknowledge it), and it was _such_ a party.

He had never been to such a party, undercover or out from it.

A Lord's house. Summer estate, but still. Crystal and china and silver and liveried staff. A buffet of _things_: not food to eat (though there was plenty of that), but of objects of value, of beauty to behold. Feasts for the eyes of a semi-reformed pickpocket and confidence man. Temptations to the fingers. All within an easy grasp.

Mitch's instructions or no, he would have had no trouble finding her among the crowd in attendance at Barnsdale. She was the beauty of the hour, and everything from her clothing to her coiffure outshone the rest of them. But for him, the brother (and once-upon-a-time cohort) of His Majesty's prisoner Tom Thatcher, it was easy enough to identify her by nothing more than the fabled stone worn upon her finger, once belonging to an Alderney inmate. Large, and deeply colored. An absurd bauble to put on the hand of so young and so pretty a woman. And yet, he almost felt that he could smell it. Smell the metal of the coin it was worth.

He could have found his way to it in the dark.

Yet it was also true that after years of long nights and tedious hours with Unit 1192 that he had had the elements of the Lady Marion Nighten's face long-memorized. Like a faithful parishioner, he had attended a multitude of unavoidable homilies upon that very visage by Ox. And whether Ox's chapel that day were foxhole or the belly of a sub, out under the night sky, or hunkered down hidden in a country cellar, the Lady Marion's face was the text from which Robin most often spoke.

The roundness of the jaw, the piquancy of the mouth (even when closed), that particular shade of eye color.

And here she was - the Lady Marion Nighten - across a room from him, standing among the soft light of such a party; wholly flesh and blood, breathing the same air as did he. As though Ox's reminiscences had conjured her into being, rather than that her being had conjured Ox's nostalgic words.

Hardly a job at all to walk out onto the floor and cut in once she was asked by some random Jerry to dance.

But why had she agreed to dance with him, Allen Dale - unknown quantity - when he cut in, he had always wondered (yet never asked)? Was she, too, like him, caught up in the make-believing of that night? Or was it merely that persistent, runaway imbalance for anyone living on such terms: the knowledge that they were none of them who they said they were, but rather all actors in a play, improvising as they went along? And so the fact that she was not who she said she was made her hopeful that he also was neither?

_Was she simply a reckless hothead? Always looking for a new challenge?_

She had to have suspected him. She knew him not at all, and his earliest words to her had been easily verifiable lies.

_Why had Marion not refused him?_

_Why had Eleri not refused Gisbonnhoffer?_

_And did he truly doubt her? _

_Ought he to do? After all he had now learned?_

* * *

><p>"'<em>Just as phony as it can be<em>,'" he mused to himself very low, under his breath, into the darkness of the cab.

"What?" asked Eleri, keen to anything he might say, no matter how hushed or to himself.

"'_It's a Barnum and Bailey world_,'" he told her, finding that quoting the words of someone else in the moment proved easier than formulating his own.

"No. _No_ it isn't," she said, not taking her eyes off him, though he made no eye contact, and continued to look out the car door window like a man about to make sick from the motion of the vehicle.

_It is real. It is all very, very real_, Eleri thought desperately in her mind, not knowing how to make him believe her when she could not even get him to glance her way, and when he seemed suddenly averse to her presence, to her very touch.

* * *

><p>Shortly, the cab pulled up to Hotel Coracao, and he got out. He said nothing to Eleri, did not hand her out of the car, nor let her pass through the hotel's main door (held open by the doorman) in advance of himself. His sore mind could only think of delivering his body up into the semi-privacy of his room, and had no space for examining Eleri's part in what had come to pass, much less making way for her out of chivalry or offering polite invitations to follow.<p>

Though he still keenly felt that if he were not regulating his breathing it might abruptly stop on him, he got his key using as few words as possible with the concierge on duty, and took the steps (for all he could tell) alone.

His key went into the lock and he opened the door to let himself in, allowing it to begin closing immediately behind him. As he turned to engage the lock half-a-second later, it popped open (never having fully shut), and Eleri whisked through it, narrowly missing him almost take the impact of the door in the nose, so close he still was to it.

She was determinedly winded from climbing the stair in her tailored gown, and he did not spare a full moment recognizing that she had arrived, nor that he had narrowly missed a good bruising. He simply set about arriving in his room.

For several long moments he moved from place to place, trying to get his hands on something to occupy them, but his mind was still stalled, trapped in the moment of knowledge from the club loo, not recalling what he needed for any present task. He stood for a moment aimlessly, before spying his duffle under the bed, and moving to it, tossed it up on the mattress and peeled opened its top zipper, beginning to remove his evening clothes (cufflinks and tie and coat) and starting to sort and place things into the bag he would need to have packed by morning so that he might (as had been his plan) leave Brazil.

During this, Eleri watched him like a cat might watchfully observe a sanitarium patient pace without ceasing. Cautiously, her every sense obviously heightened in hopes of locating his motivation for such troubling, ongoing behavior.

When he still did not speak, "I don't understand," Eleri finally cried, her voice cracking (though she shed no tears). "Before - during the war, even after he killed her - _still_ you were cordial to him. _Still_, you said we must go on as though nothing had happened. 'Wear our faces'." She said this last bit as though it would prove the right goad to get him to speak, to engage with her.

When he did not, she protested, "Do not be angry with me!"

As she spoke, he walked purposefully over to the wireless and turned it on, tuning it to a local programme of rowdy, brass-heavy Carnaval music, and raised the volume just enough that it might distort her words to anyone trying to listen-in to their conversation. His mind was still swimming in the shock of Gisbonnhoffer's un-graspable confession, but with his feet finding action to occupy them at least he was now swimming, rather than half-drowning in it.

The ability for his hands to have an action to take on (especially one as mundane as packing) had seemed to dry the damp tinder that had become his usually spark-ready mind.

"Didn't kill Marion," he said in the direction of his open duffle, even though such a declaration needed a thousand words or more to come before it and put it into the proper context. Words like; 'Geis followed me into the loo. Geis has become mad. Geis asked after Marion like she had been my island neighbor these past years'. He spoke in English. It seemed a stronger, balder language for that announcement than the French in which they usually conversed.

But he voiced none of that. Only, 'didn't kill Marion'. He said it like he was capitulating it for a test, some dusty fact he had been required to memorize that held no truth or meaning in it.

What meaning it might hold for him was still in the processing phase, ten-thousand other thoughts fighting with it for precedence.

There was such brevity in his words, yet even that slight action of his tongue and voice box exhausted him.

He stood looking as though he were considering which shirt to place into the duffle next. But thinking nothing of the kind.

Eleri's face exploded with animation, her shoulders sprung immediately into a new and different kind of tension. "He told you that?" she asked, her voice harsh but also disbelieving. "That he didn't kill her?" She answered him in French, resisted the urge to try and place her hand again on his arm to get him to look at her. "And he expected you to believe him?" Her hand went instead to her own temple. "What does it matter who pulled the trigger at his orders? _He_ murdered her." She said the words as though she were speaking them to Gisbonnhoffer, bringing her accusation against him. It was clear she thought Allen meant Geis had denied _directly_ murdering Marion.

Her hand fell from her forehead as she finished speaking and joined her other where it was gripped in the folds of her gown, wadding the rich material into her fists with her anger and anguish over what she was hearing.

Now, and only now, Allen turned himself toward her, away from where he had been robotically packing. He knew he owed it to himself to examine her as she spoke in reply to what he had said, though he knew better than anyone (possibly even better than Eleri herself) what Marion's death had meant to her. Knew that in '43, Eleri Vaiser had not had the sophistication (nor the desire) to conceal her true feelings about anything, even when her own well-being was on the line. Knew that there were few if any people on earth she had revered the way she had revered Marion. The notion that she had somehow colluded with Gisbonnhoffer in duping him and the gang regarding Marion's death was preposterous.

But still, he knew he owed it to Ox (to the man at the center of this, the man who would not have such information and interaction with Eleri to go on in _his _summation of her) to get a read on her as she reacted to this news.

Allen replied, correcting her understanding of his statement, though his explanation was slender, parsed out in the simplest terms his mind would at-present let him assemble. "'Says what you saw was a doppel-"

He had stalled out on the unfamiliar term, but she finished it for him, a look of wonder and beginning dismay painting her face. "Doppelganger?"

"Sent Marion off-island, to a labor camp in Germany. In that girl's place."

Immediately, Eleri went down. Not in a faint. Women like Eleri did not faint, but rather, as though someone had quite literally cut her legs out from under her, she dropped. Straight down. The sound she made as her bum hit the floor was a deep thud that must've been painful to experience, but did nothing to shock him into action.

Instead, he continued to stand, a man in the eye of a whirlpool, seeing the destruction all about him, unable to leave for fear of being sucked into it himself. His own mind numb; slow, a terrible tangle. Being certain to breathe - to check that his heart was still beating - seemed all the tasks he could presently manage.

* * *

><p>She was on the floor, now below him, her knees very unglamorously making twin peaks as they formed a mountainous frame of sorts under her posh skirt. But even in all this, she still looked up at <em>him<em>.

He watched on as her face sagged as though new, untenable weight had been added instantly to her person, no doubt causing her collapse.

She didn't have to ask it for him to know the question she most wanted to ask.

"So Marion is - Marion is -" she started, looking more intently toward him for some encouragement, some sign of reassurance.

But of course he had none to give, and he was so awash in chaos of his own, he had no sympathy, no greater wisdom to share with her. He only watched, a man in a train wreck looking on, helpless and hurting, as another unsuspecting bystander being hit, goes down.

* * *

><p>But she could not stay on the floor forever. Without his assistance, she levered her arm onto the bed's mattress (which she was alongside of), and pulled herself up to standing. Her left arm and hand still wore her evening glove.<p>

"We don't _know_ what Marion is," she deduced aloud, and with that conclusion, she was suddenly overcome by great galloping sobs without tears, only hugely sucking intakes of breath that compressed her shoulders and sent her frock's matching wrap slipping to the floor.

Both her hands went to her mouth, one gloved, the white of the glove bright in the room, the other, not.

It was very shortly apparent that her mind had not, like his, locked up, but rather began spinning at twice its usual rate.

The hands at her mouth came together in something like a double fist, she exhaled strongly through her nose, and she lowered them slowly.

She took a step back from him, decisive, and without looking thrust her hand behind the bed's headboard and pulled out his gun from where he had hidden it there.

She looked at him.

He looked at her, seeing the practiced way she held the grip in her hand, recalling the days he had spent teaching her how to use and care for such a weapon.

"Wocher doin'?" he asked, forgetting the duffle and the needful task of packing it.

"You know what I'm going to do," she said, and if her voice did not tremble with tears, her eyes threatened to.

"Don't," he said, softly, nearly pleadingly, not as though he were commanding a child, but as though he were petitioning a loved one to reconsider.

"_I'm_ not a little girl anymore," she told him, but with none of the old defiance in her tone. "You've shown me what I need to know to take care of him."

"Don't," and his eyes squinted closed as he said it.

"Why," she asked, as though it were not at all a practical request. "Because I'm a woman?"

"No," he quietly inclined his head. "Do you know where to find him?"

Her brows came together, suspicious he was at trying to distract her from what she had decided to do. From experience knowing that if anyone could so distract her, it would be him.

"His wife talks," she explained to him. "They stay always at the same hotel when they visit. He cannot sleep nights and goes out around the same time every night, taking walks alone. He will be at that hotel, or nearby it." She did not have to add, 'and so shall I.'

"Don't."

"Why?" and it seemed she would cry, her eyes rolling up to the ceiling in a further effort to fight back tears. "You can't have thought you taught me to shoot and I would never use such a skill."

To her credit, she did not gesticulate with the pistol.

His own eyes felt sore, as though tears right now would be a welcome salve to their brittle surface. The sight of her; glove missing, wrap gone, frock no longer nicely pressed, Eleri absent the trimmings, her cheeks high-red from no known make-up, her eyes damp and threatening her mascara, seemed to throw a lever in his head, creaking back into motion like a chain being placed back upon a bicycle. Slowly, methodically, he found something to hold onto within himself besides confusion and distress.

About an hour ago, knowing he was about to leave Brazil he had held - of all the women on the planet - _Eleri_ in his arms, had felt verging on something he had never felt before, much less with Eleri Vaiser. And then; Marion was not killed. Ox was lied to. Gisbonnhoffer turned mad.

And now Eleri, grown-up-in-a-cage, devious, righteous anger Eleri who loved Marion like one might love an angel or a saint or the Holy Mother herself was standing in front of him sharing her plans to exact revenge upon the man responsible.

For so much, responsible.

And she had asked him why _she_ should not kill Gisbonnhoffer.

He noticed his foot was sore from standing without his cane. Noticed that his brain seemed again to be tracking things for him. Doing its job.

"Because I've done such work before," he told her, without being more specific, in his own mind seeing the beaches of Dunkirk, the alleyways of Paris, the farms of Normandy, twice a side street in Peter Port. Not so many that he had yet lost count.

"Because any decent person wot _has_ done would work to keep you from the stain of doing likewise," he told her, growing closer to the truth. "Because, because of this," and he reached for Annie's denouncement paper where he kept it always on his person. "'cause of _her_. The woman I told you about. Why I came to Brazil." His voice was still unsteady in its speech, his tongue acting as though it were cramped from lengthy lack of use. The blood coursing through his veins seemed still, quite tremulous.

He had reached into his pocket, and his wallet within. "I found this on Jersey," he explained to Eleri. "Where she'd been sent after Treeton. 'Was sewn into the hem of a skirt sold by Jerry to islanders what needed clothing. It's in her hand," he explained further, needlessly pointing out on the slender slip of paper where Eleri might find Annie's words in her own tongue.

Eleri did not lay the gun down, but watching his face intently as he spoke, then took the small paper to read it for herself.

He had never shown this paper to another living being. Not even to the Jerseywoman whose house he found it within.

It had been like a special thing to him, a holy thing. A private communication, a directive for his eyes only. Of course he knew Annie had not meant it that way. Could not have known that _he_ would find it, and act upon it as a sacred text.

By watching Eleri's face he could tell when she finished the French and moved on to squint at the other iterations of the denouncement to be found in the multiple languages written upon the scrap.

She read the French again. And then, a third time.

She looked up, gently returned the paper to him.

A moment later she extended the gun, grip in his direction. "You should have told me these names," she said, and he knew she was calling him out for not trusting her, though she did not say so directly. "_I_ would have told you where he was. _I_ would have helped you find him." During the short span of that speech, nothing about her looked at all phony.

Outside, beyond the balcony of the hotel room, the brass and drums of the Carnaval revelers could be heard, even over the wireless where he had set it to playing. So much frivolity and carefree celebration in the city that held them. Joy and merriment that seemed blocked somehow from reaching them here. They could hear it, they could look at it, observe what such gaiety meant for others, but they two, they were locked out. Trapped away from it. Drowning, still, in new knowledge of the past. The past whose grip upon them they could not seem to slip, to be free of.

_Was Eleri aware of this? Did she notice as life and happiness danced by her? Was it fair of him even to be thinking about such a thing after when he had learned of Marion's true fate?_ Anya, who would know no earthly happiness, no merry revels. Ox, who grieved a woman - his very heart - he might not have needed to be separated from.

And Marion, Marion _somewhere_ - in-ground or walking above it - lost and wounded, never finding her way home. Never knowing why they did not search to find her. Why they gave her up for lost.

It felt as though the last decade of his life had been built upon this lie, this chief lie alone: the dead doppelganger of Marion, and the only thing that made sense about that knowledge was that that very life had crumbled all-but to dust in his hands.

He still held the gun, its weight real and foreboding where it rested on its side, impotent and un-aimed in his hand.

"We're fools," he said to Eleri, and his shoulders shook with the admission of it. The back of his skull throbbed, as though he still lay, unmoving, upon that Barnsdale davenport where he had learned that nothing would ever be alright again.

"He has won, well and truly, don't you see?" he asked her, without saying Gisbonnhoffer's name.

Her lower lip shook as she tried to hold back from full-out weeping, the look in his own eyes having an effect upon her more profound than he would have credited.

"She will have thought we broke faith with her, that we never come looking for her." He threw his arm out with the gun now in his grip, as though aiming at something across the room, and gestured strongly with it. "He did not send her on to Heaven, out of our grasp, beyond our ken — into a place where there _is_ no more suffering. He sent her into the belly of Hell, El'ri. He sent her down to _suffering_," and now the gun aimed at the floor, "suffering and want the likes of us two — for all that we have seen summat of it - will never know. He _cursed_ her," his voice began to break, and the ability to clearly pronounce words left him but he fought to speak on, "and we were too easily gulled to see it, to scupper his plans."

Tears stood out on her cheeks, falling once again as she listened intently to what he had to say. She would never have believed that loving someone could be so much about pain.

_Why not say it all?_ he thought. _What worse could come of it?_

"It were my responsibility," he brought the gun up to his chest, pressing its side into him, "that night she were," he confessed. "My place to see her to safety — on to freedom!"

Eleri shook her head, obviously unsettled by the gun's proximity to his person. "But how -?"

"Yes!" he could not even let her finish her question. He rushed on. It was all coming out now, spitting forth from him like someone had engaged the valve on a long-dry fountain. "There were a secret transport that night, headed for England — for home — on to her family. And I miscalculated in my handling of her." Instinctively his free hand went again to the back of his head, and he thrust the gun away from him, onto the mattress. "'Twas Marion who nobbled me with that iron, and stole the launch. 'Twas _Marion_, dead-set on sending a downed RAF-er home in the place reserved for her. And _this_ is what has been done to 'er!"

He felt his face dissolve into an expression over which he had no control, nor, any desire to control or mitigate. "Done to her and to — and to —" he could not say Ox's name, not any part of it. Even his mind could barely finish the thought.

His breath and heart were out-of-control, he was chilled and yet feverish at the same time. His hands felt swollen, their joints in malaise, no longer inclined to action. Within and without he was a collision of emotion; grinding, shattering in a moment of terrible, catastrophic impact.

His voice was scarcely comprehensible, even to him. "Oh, El," he cried out, and she could not tell if he was calling her name or swearing a good British 'hell'. "Oh, El," he begged again. "What 'ave we done?"

* * *

><p>With his use of that 'we', that plural pronoun, including her in his misery, in his despair, whatever had been keeping her immobile and at a distance was broken.<p>

She reached out her right hand, and pressed it flatly upon his chest, near where he had pressed the gun just moments ago. His heart galloped like he had been thrown into a cold sea, sweat from no actual exertion had collected near his hairline, the dress shirt he still wore was stuck to his skin.

As her hand came to him, their first contact since being interrupted in their embrace on the dance floor, she felt something in the instant before she made contact with him like a circuit being completed, the pull of something magnetic, the come-hither resistance of oil as it shapes itself to water.

It was as though he were leaning into her palm, as though something she was doing was helping to keep him upright, to keep him relating to her rather than to again turning away and again turning silent. As her hand had touched him she had felt a pricking, as though in that gesture something had begun re-stitching them together in a new and altered way.

She did not feel she could bear this news of Marion's fate if he were not there, too. Without him she thought she would likely disintegrate from it.

Looking at him now, feeling his heart, the expansion of his breath through her hand, she saw that that was exactly what _he_ was about to do. _Disintegrate_.

She hardly noticed that she had been crying again. Tears seemed so unimportant, so ordinary - the only possible response to the moment. She stepped closer to Allen, to his failing body, feeling the crunch of her once-pressed fancy frock between the two of them.

His hands, now without the pistol, hung to his sides.

She matched him tear for tear. But hers were no longer only for Marion, for the hideous trick of her fate. They were for the man Allen Dale before her. Echoes of the shaking sobs he struggled to get out. And some for herself, for this last-ever night.

Finally he calmed to the point that she felt him sag slightly, and as he moved closer to her for support, her hand getting trapped between them, felt him bring his head down to her bared shoulder and rest it there as though they were still in the dance.

She did not know how long it had been since they had returned from the club. Time seemed both to have passed, and yet never to have passed since that night they spent, her buried in his chest, weeping 'til she slept from exhaustion, back at Barnsdale. But change had happened since that night. They were different from that Mr. Allen, that Eleri. Life had, perhaps, ruined them. That night, a night she thought of more often than she would like (both the horror of losing Marion, but also the comfort of another soul's presence in such a time) had come to them again.

It had, perhaps, never left them. Dogging them at every turn. Now (they knew) taunting them that what they had so long believed was not, in fact, true. They had been deceived, stripped of any hope.

And she wanted hope, this, the most hopeless of all nights. The man she had only just realized she loved destined to leave the continent in a forever goodbye. (He was still packing for his departure, after all). If love could be pain, as it was in this moment, then she never wanted to be free of pain. Because it would mean being free of him. Being free of Marion.

Any plans that she may have had, any strategic moves she may have day-dreamed about for this final night had evaporated like steam from a ready-kettle. Enough make-believe. She would add what was real to their discovery. She did not think he would believe her words if she were to announce that she loved him. She did not think him ready to understand such a thing yet.

But she could give him this; no more phoniness between them. Perhaps he would understand that. Perhaps he could accept a proposal, so couched. Perhaps he could decode it.

And even if he could not, she would have done it: all in, all risked.

She pulled slightly away. His head came up and away from her shoulder.

Through a face still wet from tears she looked straight into his eyes and confessed, "I meant to run over your foot."

He looked back at her, the angle of their gaze so close, so intimate, his breath not yet coming placidly. "I know," he said, and rested his forehead against hers like a man who had just run back-to-back marathons; haggard, thirsty, needing something upon which to lean for support.

She closed her eyes, wishing for the moment to last, even in this sadness, even in this despair. Her mind hurt too much, her heart beat, but as one bruised, swollen with the injury.

She thought of Marion by turns, thought of this Anya by turns, of Gisbonnhoffer and hatred and abandonment and fear. She thought of Allen and of all that he had said, had confessed to. She thought he must be the best man she had ever known. And she never wanted him to pull away from her again.

* * *

><p>His mind was a flood, he could stop nothing from pouring into it, blotting out whatever he might have been thinking of, considering before.<p>

_There is only this room_, he began to tell himself, to quieten it. _Let there be right now only this room_. It was all the geography that he could manage. _Only Eleri and me in all the world_. No other thoughts, no other emotions to dread. Only Ellie's warm temple. Ellie, tellin' me what I already know. Teaching me what I should have already felt - letting me -

* * *

><p>Neither could have said who changed the angle of that contact first, when forehead-to-forehead became cheek to nose, but neither pulled away from either salt tears or streaking mascara when their lips found each other in a kiss.<p>

And then another.

And the world became a tangle of fingers and fabrics and skin and what had stood for an embrace became slowly, urgently, intimate, blocking out the sounds of the wireless, the hoots of the distant Carnaval, the weight of the gun not yet fired.

And those kisses may have tasted of brimstone, of the charcoal of something that had been burnt, and in her hair he may have smelt salt water though she had not been sea bathing, but his hands did not falter or stall in their action, and though she said no other decipherable words beyond his name, she willed her every move to be borne of love, of hope.

Of the real.

And the duffle found itself booted back to the floor.

**...TBC...**


	25. Chapter 22 - An Inveterate Habit

Allen Dale woke for the Nightwatch. An inveterate habit no longer unusual; he did so most nights, no matter the fact that Lady Marion's illegal Guernsey broadcast was long ago terminated, the invader which it flouted soundly defeated and dismantled. Still and all, he woke for it. Nothing to listen to most nights but the sounds of emptiness in his head.

He woke to noticing that they still clung together, the two of them, like drowning men to a lone life belt upon an angry sea. Clinging - neither one more than the other - without regard to the heat still standing all about them, the muggy tropical air strong enough to penetrate the third floor and well beyond.

Toward the open doors onto the balcony, the long thin curtains hung lankly, no breeze of relief to trouble or muss them. Sounds of the city at two a.m. drifted up, what colored lights were burning reflecting off the buildings opposite. Sometimes, blinking.

Nearer the shore, the final party of Carnaval would still be in full swing.

He felt no less tense than he had before they two had arrived at the bed, but yet, more centered. More determined in what he was about to do, the lasting decisions he was on the cusp of making.

Allen looked down at Eleri, at what he could see of her, occluded by their embrace which he had no immediate desire to break. He seemed to see her years ago, as an infant, a child. And further on, growing into a girl. But as he watched in his mind's eye his feelings were not particularly parental ones, but they _were_ ones of protection, of a desire to shield the hungry heart, the soul (he supposed) of her.

_What was Eleri, really, but another casualty of the war, a conflict long in coming-on, the causes of it rooted in the very way her parents behaved toward her?_

What was _he_, really, but a soldier unable to carry a weapon for two-thirds or greater of that war? Who had learned (and had had to re-learn many times) to step back from conflict when it was just that conflict, that desperate coming-to-a-head of hostility and disagreement that he most needed to take part in?

It didn't matter that she had, as he had once predicted to himself, grown into a beauty. It would not have mattered if she were homely (although perhaps he would have been slightly less likely to find himself on the spur of the moment making love to her), there was something about her over which he felt possessive, responsible for, and whether it were her self, her body, or only her condition in life he would perhaps never be quite sure, but there it was: Kommandant's daughter meant something to him. A large and important something.

And he knew he was a fool for allowing in the sentimentality of it, not shrugging the feelings off as he could (and had) with so many others like them. But he knew he was not so foolish as to think that just because in this moment he felt tender that he would always feel so, or that she would make it easy for him to feel so once she woke.

But overwhelmingly he found that he did not mind, any more than he presently minded her intimate proximity in the pervasive heat.

So, fool he was.

To add to his folly, or at least what Allen Dale, in his usual waking hours would dub 'folly', he took a moment and, thinking of his French Catholic Gran's voice, addressed the ceiling of the hotel room.

"_Mon Dieu_," he began, using the French he had so often heard her speak in her prayers. "I know we do not, generally, speak, but I know you to be on quite friendly terms with Blind La Salle of Sark, and I daresay he might vouch for me somewhat were you to ask him. Stephen's a good man. One of your best, really, and I think _he_ would understand what I need in the coming days to do. Let me do it, Lord. Let me get it right, well and finally. After that, I can die. No complaints. Whatever regrets I have left after this, I accept. Whatever penances I have incurred, I accept. Without argument. Only, grant me three days. Maybe four. I know I've only a lifetime of screw-ups and mistakes to offer You in payment for it, but…"

He hurriedly tacked on what he thought he remembered of the _Pater Noster_.

Still in this frame-of-mind, the hour-long span of the Nightwatch not yet spent, in the wake of his present thoughts, he turned his face back toward Eleri, still sleeping and ignorant of all that had passed within his mind and between him and Heaven.

He spoke to her in the French that she loved best, just as one might speak to a slumbering child; assurances and affirmations of tenderness and hopes for the child's happy future, somewhere along the way his soft words growing into pats and caresses.

She lay in his arms, and he in hers. _Fait accompli._

He had not meant to wake her, but such attentions as gentle treatment and the speech of sweet words in her life were rare, and when she did awake it was pleasantly, and willing for what proved again naturally to follow.

* * *

><p><strong>1945 - Schleswig-Holstein German Labor Camp - SurgeryDispensary -** The dead body of the woman lay on what passed for an examination table, situated between two women who stood, each to one side, looking down at it. The camp nurse, Freyga Tuckmann, grabbed for the rosary hanging 'round her neck, worn (or was it hidden?) inside her blouse.

The second woman offered no protest (but also did not join in) as she silently recited a prayer and kissed its cross.

"We knew it was serious," she announced, "but they would let us do nothing for her."

Tuckmann, an older woman with steel-colored hair under a muted headscarf, shook her head, refusing to accept her assistant's apology. "It is not your fault, Magda. Do not let their evil poison your mind into thinking you failed her. _Or yourself_. Their wickedness is their own." She paused, but did not sigh. There was too much of sighing anymore. One could hardly find breath for it. "We stand against it when we can. But we never accept fault for what we try to, and yet cannot, change."

The younger woman, addressed as Magda, listened to the older woman - as she always did. Her eyes were, as usual, bright with intelligence and keen of observation. So much so that Tuckmann had more than once noted that in the presence of guards Magda angled her face down, averting her eyes, cloaking them in shadow, lest such visible acumen draw unwanted attention to herself. It did not help that those eyes were blue - a sticking point with others in the cell blocs, those impossibly blue eyes that were said to be a siren song to German soldiers now inculcated with the notion of Aryan beauty.

"They are keeping you from us," the younger woman said, referring to the length of time since last she had seen her medical mentor here in the labor camp's small (but sometimes desperately needed) dispensary.

"Yes," Tuckmann agreed. "They are letting me come to you less often," her eyes scanned the shelves of the small room around her, what had always been scant supplies now all-but exhausted, no one even pretending at an interest in re-stocking them. She looked back to Magda, wondered again at her friend's life before the war, before her time at this camp - the way the file she had been given on her (from which to pick an assistant) did not seem to reflect much in the person to which it had been attached. What would her life look like in a world where the war was over? She never spoke of family, never of a home or work.

She spoke of the past not at all. Nothing of life before this place.

It was not so strange. Enslavement affected each differently. From the woman who could not stop talking about old times - to the woman who believed she would see all those she loved again - to the young woman who spoke of nothing more distant than last year.

Freyga turned to wash her hands in a nearby basin after having touched the body. "Change is coming," she told Magda, feeling it important such news no come as a surprise. "The balance tips, I think," she confided, her tone quiet, her face as always in these times soberly sincere - but not unkind. "One hears things. Feels things. There is much they are not telling you. But you must be prepared."

"For what?" the younger woman asked, curiously, but her question was quickly set aside as the upper chest of the dead woman moved.

"What is this?" Sister Freyga hissed, keeping her voice low, as any of the German officers who proctored the camp might be passing by the door at any time. She stepped over to open up the dead woman's worn dress, revealing a tiny, undersized baby nestled inside a crudely improvised sling.

The Sister's eyes flashed over to the younger woman's. "You said the baby had died." She waited for an explanation.

"She begged me, Sister," Magda protested. "It is her husband's child. And she knows - knew - not when she might see him again. She would not be parted from it. I-I don't know how she's even been feeding it. Indeed, I thought it _was_ dead. Some time ago."

The child, small as a toy and obviously as fragile as the white china of its skin, knew better than to squall at being taken from the immediacy of its mother's body (even had it had the strength or the lungs for a wail). It was a camp baby, after all. Silence meant survival.

The Sister lifted the child into her arms, as she had with so many a baby in her lifetime- but never one of her own - shockingly light as a feather, and pulled aside what passed for its nappy to discern that it was a boy. As her hands held it, she crooned to it for a moment, sounds in that unknowable language that had comforted many a babe in good times and bad.

She shook her head. She was not angry, though her protegee had deceived her. The outrage in her initial reaction had merely been one of danger, of what hiding this child could cost Magda, of what keeping it alive may have cost its mother.

"This is not her husband's child, Magda. Herr Mueller was killed for trying to escape two years ago, now. His body displayed near the camp gate for all to see. Perhaps it was easier for her to think her son was Herr Mueller's child. But, no," she shook her head and a melancholy smile came to her lips. "This angel has no earthly father."

Magda gently closed Frau Mueller's blouse, her head nodding that she understood what Sister Freyga was telling her.

"You ought have told me, though," the Sister took her to task, but without venom. "I could have taken him - like the others. Gotten him to safety. But now? Now I cannot. They search me as I leave, go through my bag," she gestured toward her doctor's bag, perfect for concealing an infant. "There is no way I would not be caught. _You_ must keep him," she extended the tiny, alert-but-eerily-silent baby to her assistant.

"I, keep him?" the younger woman accepted the child into her arms with the practiced ease of one acquainted with such medical duties, though only a short while ago she had had no such familiarity with maternal matters. But her face was puzzled. _Her, keep a baby __here__ - when the Sister had only just chastised her for letting another forced laborer do likewise?_

"Herr Mueller's first name was Luka," Sister Freyga announced, pulling a packet of something ground-up from her bag. "Take this, dissolve it by the teaspoon - in milk - if you can find any," her nose gave the sound of a scoff. "If not, in whatever passes for water. Get him to drink it. We cannot be certain I will be allowed back anymore to the dispensary, much less into the camp." Something made her reach her hand out to the younger woman, and place it upon her shoulder as she spoke on. "The German interest in the welfare of their laborers lessens each day. They no longer care even if you are fit to work."

The confusion remained on Magda's face, coupled now with wary intuition. "What are you saying?"

"The Allies are coming," the Sister warned. "I do not know when, and I do not know in what numbers or from which direction. But they _are_ coming. And when they get here…" Tuckmann was surprised to see not joy on her helper's face - not delight at possible rescue - but concern.

"When they get here?"

"You must go." How Freyga hoped she would take her counsel. "Once the gates are opened, you must fly this place - with Luka, now. There is no way of knowing what will happen. The workers will be liberated and the camp shut down, yes. But how will these soldiers see the children of their enemies? Our little angels? Will they treat them kindly? Will someone in charge decide they must stay in Germany - with their _fathers_? The children you and I have managed to place in safety, we cannot help any further. But the children - do not lie to me now - still here, hiding? I cannot see what their future might look like. Only, it will look far brighter _away_ from here."

She knew there were several, older children who had managed to hide from the guards, or be kept hidden by their mothers.

"Even myself - what will become of me, Magda? Employed by the Germans? Accepting their coin and this position? Will someone speak for me? Say that I came here to do good? Or will they keep silent, let me be punished?" She spoke her thoughts aloud for the first time, giving voice to her own fears. "And Magda? You must _not_ forget," she advised the younger woman, her hand going to the younger woman's cheek, though she had never behaved so familiarly before. "You will want to. And there is no shame in that, in wanting to skip over pain in the past," she thought of the girl's unspoken past that had never been referenced. "But do not allow yourself that luxury. Do not let _Luka_ forget." She took it for granted that Magda would honor the boy's would-have-been father in naming him, and that he would survive, no matter the presently perilous state of his health and welfare.

The younger woman looked at her, and had she not been holding the baby, not been reeking with the effects of mistreatment and possibly lice, would have embraced her. Her eyes grew full, though no tears fell. "I will never forget _you_."

Freyga Tuckmann smiled. No matter what else life had given her to navigate over the past years, she had been happy with this sometimes odd, stoic-by-turns woman, this assistant in her work and duty.

Through her, in the darkest of worlds, she had still been blessed. "If God wills," she told her, removing the last of the meager supplies she had brought for the dispensary from her doctor's bag to leave behind, "we _will_ see each other again."

**…****TBC…**

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note:<strong> reviewers '_guest_' and '_Marian_' please log in or contact me at my e-mail so I can respond to your lovely reviews! (otherwise I have no way of speaking to you other than in these types of notes!)  
>All others who have reviewed the last chapter - I will be replying, as always - just a bit late... ;) and <em>Thank You<em>!


	26. Chapter 23 - Til Death Do Us Part

**ALDERNEY - Treeton Camp****- 1943 - **The day was not hot, but Allen Dale's level of comfort when in a uniform had always been quite low. This particular uniform, made to fit another man and not yet tailored to his own measurements, might have made a right proper-looking chauffeur out of its original owner, but on him it no doubt looked a fright.

Its previous owner had been rather rotund of belly, and short of leg.

Kommandant had demanded an appointment for him with a Peter Port tailor later that very afternoon to see to the over-abundance of fabric in the coat, and the dearth in the trousers' hem, but that had not yet come to pass, it still being early. It would mean a trip across the waters before it might be seen to, following a dismissal from Kommandant himself stating that he would have no further use for his new man, Dale Allen as was, today.

Until such time it was to be polish, spit, shine, buff. _Polish, spit, shine, buff_. _Something_ besides an endless string of fags to pass the time waiting for his new boss.

Presently he was on his back (lap blanket upon the ground to protect the fabric of the uniform) trying to examine the hard-to-see back of a tyre for a potential puncture. Construction upon this island's military buildings, sheds and huts ever on-going, and so recent still that nails might be found nearly anywhere. And tyres ever at picking them up.

Dale had not been at his duty long when he noticed something nearby blocking out what little sun had been helping his examination along.

He cricked his neck just so, in an effort to see who was there - preparing to jump up with a ready-excuse in case it proved to be the Kommandant - and was surprised to see instead of familiar Jerry jackboots, the ankles and lower calves of a woman. A woman in a rather fetching pair of modest heels.

For a long moment (likely felt by only himself) his mind stalled out at gathering any further information about the person now between himself and the sun's rays.

"Why, you're not LeBeouf," he heard a voice say, its tone one of curious - tentative, even - surprise.

The shade of the sun (to the woman's back) briefly kept him from seeing her face, but he quickly adjusted at being addressed by her, and her face came into his view easily enough.

"LeBeouf?" he said, turning on the blanket until he was able to right himself. "Nah, he's done for. Gaming debts, 'twas said. Got 'im a broken leg, 'think it was. Ankle at the very least. Won't drive for weeks - if not longer." He pulled himself up to standing, gave a harder-than-it-needed-to-be tug at his uniform's coat to compensate for the billow of fabric in the belly, and stamped a foot to bring the trouser hem as low as it might fall. "Bit shoddy yet, I know, me in his kit."

"His what?" she asked.

"Kit," he said, recognizing now the accent in her speech. Russian, he thought - Eastern. He made a mental note for the gang that more than Germans were populating this island, Alderney. Though in what capacity he could not be certain. "His rig," he offered as explanation, her face still registering confusion. "His clothes - his uniform."

Along with her dawning understanding, she gave him a quickly buried look of concern, as though she did not think much of his griping about his present attire. As though it were embarrassing to her and she disapproved of it. But as much as he saw this, read this in her face, he also saw that she was at learning to keep such knee-jerk reactions to herself. To shade what she really thought.

This, far more than the woman herself, interested him.

Her attire was not lost on him, though. He had not seen a woman dressed so nicely since the unit had dropped into France, and due to an operational mix-up (and possibly some of Mitch's haphazard navigational calculations) ended up dead-center in Occupied Paris, nearby several fashion ateliers that catered to the Nazi high command's local mistresses.

She wasn't dressed high-fashion by any means, but her frock was new and nicely pressed - and its style current - not the four-to-five-year-old style Islander women wore for lack of any alternative.

"Dale Allen," he grabbed for his hat from off the Duesenberg's bonnet so that he might put it on his head and then in turn gallantly tip it to her.

"Anya Grigorovna," she replied in kind, but he noticed that even in the announcing of her name something about her seemed closed, perhaps slightly haunted, as though a spectre hung behind her, over her shoulder that only she could see.

"And how does the day find _you_, Annie?" he asked briskly, slipping in a wink to try and get a smile - or at least the beginning of a smile - out of her.

"Things are quite out-of-the-ordinary," she told him, her gaze turning distracted. "Lieutenant Gisbonnhoffer has proposed marriage, and he has busily devoted the morning to planning a party in celebration of his engagement at his estate on Guernsey."

At this unexpected but potentially useful snip of news, Allen allowed himself to muse aloud, hoping to get a hint of her loyalties. "Hmmm. Kommandant won't like that, now will he? Skivving off administration, derelicting duties to - ?" he waited a beat, two beats, to see if she would correct him, call him out for lack of respect in his tone.

_Well, no particular love for the lieutenant on her part, then_. "Who's the lucky girl, then?"

"She lives on Guernsey…at his estate," Grigorovna said - and if he wasn't mistaken there was a dryness in her tone, like an irritation in her throat. "From an old family of English nobility."

"Local celebrity, then, wot?" he smiled for her (as she was doing none of her own), winked again to let her know that he thought it cracking good luck a local girl would go for a Jerry officer.

"…Lady Marion," she finished, her face reacting not at all to his turned-cheeky antics.

"Lady Marion-" he echoed her, his own heart starting to grow a bit cold at what he feared might be the surname to come. A name he had heard with startling regularity since he had first met Robin Oxley.

"Nighten. Her father is Lord Nighten. Herr Geis' estate was once theirs. Surely you have heard of it - the - great house at Barnsdale? I understand the gardens there are quite unmatched." Her face, which was, he had decided, likely quite pretty when she didn't look quite so on the cusp of anxious, tried to pull into a hopeful expression but began to slip back into its creases of interior study.

"Well, we must wish them both joy, then, eh? Many happy returns and all that."

To this she said nothing, and he thought it was quite possible she had not marked his saying it at all.

Her eyes had gone to ground, flicking here and there, unsettled, distracted at best. When she did finally speak, it was not in direct reply to him, but on a tangential topic, about which no one could have much of an emotional investment one way or another. "I am come because the Lieutenant says Kommandant's driver's is to journey to Guernsey later today, and I am to liaise with you about returning here before you go so that you might carry the invitations to be properly posted."

"And that is very true," he wagged his head, agreeing that he was indeed bound later for Guernsey and that tailor, trying to push away the disturbing thought that not only was Oxley's girl on these islands but that she was consorting with - making plans to marry - a Jerry lieutenant. "I shall be delighted to see you again, Annie. And carry your invitations."

"They are not mine," she said, and he was struck with the sudden willfulness that seemed - out-of-nowhere - to flare within her pupils. "I should not hold such a party."

She turned away from him to walk back to the command hut, but stopped short, and turned back to elaborate. "That is, as a prisoner of Treeton Camp, I have no means by which to celebrate any thing large or small, good or evil. I live by my masters and do as they bid me. That is all. I meant nothing more."

"Right-o," he said, perhaps too quickly agreeing with her (literal) about-face, _do come out and see me again_, he thought, even in his concern for Oxley's affairs able to tag her as a potential asset. And certainly later this afternoon, as he was collecting the aforementioned invitations, planning to nick one to hand-forge a copy of (something at which he had always been adept), confirm this lieutenant's fiancée's name, and use that forgery as a means into that sure-to-be Jerry-filled swank soiree.

Later, driving Kommandant to another camp (not yet dismissed from his duties), Allen found himself replaying their brief interaction in his mind. 'My masters,' she had said, 'as a prisoner' she had said. This Anya Grigorovna had no reason to harbor any love for Jerry, then. She had not seemed the sort to feel beholden to her captors, for all they had outfitted her and kept her tidy and seemingly fed - away from the harsh toil and life of Alderney's other camp laborers. There had been an edge of fear about her, yes. But there, too - he took heart from it - had been that flare of defiant willfulness, that desire to set him right about her position, about where her loyalties might lie (even though for all she knew he was an eager collaborator). Yes. Anya Grigorovna was a woman that he could convince to take a risk, a woman willing to take a chance.

She was the very sort of asset he was so desperately in need of.

There would at least be that to bring back as news to the gang, perhaps blunt (though not enough, he could be sure of that) this news about Oxley's girl.

Probably best to bring that unsettling bit to Mitch, first. Trial run, there.

"Driver!" Kommandant's voice brought him back into the moment, the way it had of bouncing off the interior of the car.

In the backseat, Kommandant Vaiser held his forehead in his cupped hand. "Leave me," he said in a begging tone, his voice cracking. "Here, I shall commandeer another car when needed. I can bear the sight of you no longer. Come back tomorrow, stitched a-right. I shall look at you again, then. Decide if I can tolerate this tailor's handiwork. This? Take it," he thrust several Reichmarks into the front seat, where they fluttered down next to Allen like leaves from an autumn tree. "And get yourself barbered. A mustache, yes," he addressed Allen's full-face beard, grown among the unit's rough time sneaking about the brush and shadows on Guernsey, "but all this?" Vaiser swept his free hand along his own upper cheeks to illustrate, "I banish. Perhaps something small, discreetly debonair about the chin - if the man can cut it correctly, carve it out of this…Island undergrowth you rustics seem to prefer. And a pair of decent boots," he added with another flutter of bills. "If you cannot find a worthy pair, buy the best you can, and tomorrow I shall order others from France. IF I approve the rest," he gave a gesture of his hand to signify the totality of Allen's appearance. "Need I mention a proper bath?" and then to himself, "humph, one never knows, out here on the very fringe," he rolled the word around in his mouth, "of civilization." He cocked a brow at Allen as he stepped out, unaided as Allen held the door for him, onto the planking of his central camp's office hut. "A _hot_ bath." And with a final, skeptically distasteful but not wholly-disapproving glance behind, he strode away in.

* * *

><p><strong>GUERNSEY - Barnsdale Estate - 1943 - <strong>Marion Nighten sat among the allowed-to-remain-under-Occupation-Code books and papers of her father's second-floor sunroom. Lord Nighten drowsed in a nearby chair.

She found she could not help looking at him accusingly, even as he slept - as oblivious to her quandary as if he had been awake in his ongoing state of dementia.

She needed someone to talk to.

Someone capable of a dialogue.

She had just returned from a long walk, and it was early in the day for her - well before luncheon (and her having been up last night with the Nightwatch). Her eyes ached. Her mind, her very reasoning - if it could do so - ached. She had thought of nothing but the prior evening's unpleasant (but should-have-been-expected as an eventuality) event.

Lieutenant Gisbonnhoffer had been in a fine mood. Perhaps, too fine. It had irritated her that she had grown able to read him so well, so intimately. He was a man of great reserve, oft-times possessing an unearned (and distasteful to her) hauteur. On some occasions he could provide little more than a series of sneers for those around him (though never for her). On others he was more relaxed, more at attempting to be pleasant. But he was always awkward socially. Even when that society were only the two of them, alone (times she tried as cleverly as possible to avert from happening).

Her demeanor toward him was always constant: cool and detached, but never cruel. Never deliberately engaging him, nor pushing him away. She had seen her mother often enough treat people she had disapproved of in just such a way: but a hair's breadth removed from dismissive. It was a certain talent, in a very refined skill set.

To most, this behavior - while straddling the line of discourtesy - would signify, and the person in question would find elsewhere to go, other company to join with.

_But to Herr Geis?_ Well, he seemed oblivious to its implications. It worked on him not at all in this way. If anything, he seemed to expect and enjoy it. The more detached, the more supercilious she allowed herself to be, the more he (in his own, insular way) seemed to revel in it, as though she were a monarch not much given to condescension (and a graceless one at that), and he fortunate among all her subjects that she would deign to sit across from him at table.

Marion had once thought of dropping this affectation altogether, only to realize it had become a sort of armor for her, this impassiveness, the disingenuous smiles, the lack of true feeling showing in her eyes. It was as though it were another part to play, another mask to take on.

But then last night he had asked her to take it on - to take him on - permanently.

He had made several small jokes throughout the evening. A single joke would not have sparked her particular notice. Perhaps he had simply had a good day. _But several? And all before the fish course? _They were not dining with other officers. She and her father were the only two present that might be entertained by such attempts at wit.

Dinner had ended, and Gisbonnhoffer had asked her to walk the grounds with him. She had consented, because the act of being consistently agreeable to his desires was the only hope to perhaps, sometime in the future, deny him, and still be empowered to regretfully decline such a walk or similar imposition.

They had been by the fountain, within sight of the promenade. She worked always, on every such occasion to keep them within in clear view of the house.

"Marion," he had said, and she sensed more than truly felt him lean closer toward her, the smell of his after-dinner cigar foregrounding the dessert wine's aroma still upon his tongue. The hair cream used to keep his hair in place. None were unpleasant smells on their own, but together they coalesced into the smell of him, and so she fidgeted mentally at their nearness - but made no observable actions to give herself away.

"You recall, as do I, the call to deport all officers of the Great War, all peoples not born on these islands?" he had asked.

"Why yes, of course I do. I recall very clearly how instrumental you were in seeing to it that my father was not removed." She let herself look up at him through her lashes, though she agreed to hold his gaze only briefly. Any such reference of his to that 'favor' - as he saw it - could only mean his ego was in need of further thanks or that she was about to be 'indebted' - in his eyes - to him further. "How _I_ was not sent away."

He smiled. He had liked that, the words she had chosen, the credit she had given him in bringing the Nightens under the protection of the Kommandant.

"It has occurred to me that we live together here, now, very like a family," he said, in what amounted to him as deep reflection. "I have long desired such a situation, and with the war lasting on, and our troops not yet in London - " (it was rare that he referenced any shortfall on the part of the Reich, much less spoke to her of military matters) "I feel like I could best protect you, and your father, if we were truly family. _Legally_."

She tried to let only the meaning of the words he used and not their intent wash over her. Tried to be a stone made smooth and frictionless under years of a brisk stream's running current.

"Herr Geis," she said, "You wish to adopt us through the courts? How very generous of you." Her tone was dry and not at all flirtatious. "I do not understand the legalities, of course, of such a petition, what with my mother and father still living…"

But he took this deflection as a flirt, nonetheless. And even in the semi-darkness, no light escaping the black-out curtains at the house, she could see that he smiled.

It was a soft smile, a smile devoid of artifice, absent of that manufactured hauteur.

It caused her mind to startle; the alteration in him so abrupt, so unusual. It was as though for an instant she dropped her mask of impassiveness, and for a several moments she was looking at him through no lens, no preconceptions.

"Mari-on" he said almost sing-song, shaking his head slowly, smile still on his lips. "You cannot be insensible to the fact that I am -" and here the smile left him, the altered demeanor left him. He fell back into being the Geis she knew; unnecessarily intense, insecurity masked by what he thought was a show of strength, a man often done in by words, "-in love with you." He stammered slightly over the 'you'.

It sounded of a phrase he had never used before in his life, nor read in a book, nor written in a poem. His next words were rendered in a tone of his own, a tone that he chose but that was nevertheless bordering on grim. "We must marry."

Perhaps it was what his understanding told him was appropriately grave for such an auspicious conversation. Perhaps it was that his voice dropped into an unusually (even for him) low register and lost much of the expressiveness a modulation in tone would have given it.

She did not believe she only imagined the grim tincture in the phrase, though she knew from experience he would not have heard it that way.

He paused a moment and seemed to be waiting for her to speak though he had not asked her a question.

When Marion again found her voice she had explained to him that no respectable English girl would be able to give immediate consent to _any_ proposal, but that he must wait several days for her to give her answer if they wished to proceed properly.

It had been the first excuse (the first deferral that she could manufacture) that had popped into her head. Of course there was no real truth to it, but English customs always seemed to charm the German Lieutenant, and this one (as with so many things throughout the evening) left him again laughing.

"I will give a great party to announce it," he had declared, in his head going forward and making grand plans for his yet-unaccepted proposal. "I shall invite everyone in command. Prinzer himself, and I shall find you a jewel for your gift."

As Marion sat now in her father's sunroom, she had produced a lengthy mental list of other quaint customs she wished to invoke to further delay her reply, to mire it deeply in perpetual postponements: She could say yes, but add the condition that they would not marry until the war was over. That he must obtain her father's consent. She could point out that all Nighten monies were banked in London at Lloyd's (untrue), and so he could have no dowry of her as the branch in St. Peter Port was shuttered in the Occupation and inability to communicate with London. But as she went over them, one by one they all began to sound of schemes that would only work in a storybook.

There had been no real question of their engagement, of course. Geis was already at planning a party to announce it. Two and a half weeks he felt he would need for the planning of it, for the invited to be contacted and to reply, other soldiers to make arrangements so that they might leave their posts and attend. Two and a half weeks so that he might have the ability to send for things to arrive by several supply ships from France.

The only real question for her, the appointed fiancée, was to decide if she were going to resist it, or accept it.

Rejecting it without consequence seemed unlikely in the extreme.

So she had risen early this morning and sought-out Eva Heindl. But the other girl, her friend, had only happy congratulations to offer her. Eva could only see (and rightly so, perhaps) that marriage to a German officer on these islands, in these times was to have status, to have security; food to eat and protection from want.

And during their conversation, Marion was more aware than ever that even had Eva disapproved they two had never spoken out to each other about the German Occupation and its occupiers. Neither of them truly knew the others' heart about such matters. And it was too dangerous now to wade in to such deep and troubled waters. This was not to be a truth they were ever to share.

She had walked past Mr. Thornton's path, considered going to see him. She knew he held no love for the Germans. Knew him to be a good man, albeit one who had for the most part led a simple life on his patch, here. But as she contemplated a visit, she found she could hear him already, the answer he would give. That he was nobody to counsel a Lord's daughter in what to do. That she must follow her own mind.

So she walked past the turning.

Back at Barnsdale, she had gone up to the abandoned nursery near the servants' quarters, tried to conjure Clem in her mind. Those rare times when they were children that he had agreed to play with the baby (her) and mock-slay dragons come to carry off the princess (her).

She allowed herself the luxury of imagining him battling Geis to the Marquess of Queensbury rules (he had boxed to some acclaim at university) - in a fair fight, of course. There was much blood and a great many well-landed blows in her daydream, and naturally, Handsome Clem would triumph in the bout.

Further, she imagined Clem and his other MI-6ers parachuting in in their business suits laden with their secret information and re-taking the Island, sending Geis and his fellow Germans running out into the surf, wild to escape capture.

It was the nursery, after all - few places more suited to such preposterous flights of fancy.

She had even walked past the downstairs sitting room which contained her mother's harp. Let herself shallowly wonder what her mother might say, before vetoing the effort and deciding that as far as Lady Miranda was concerned, any proposal was better than none at all.

_And that of a man in a position of power? With future prospects? Better than most._

She resisted the urge to walk over and attempt to topple the heavy harp, as if her mother had been present to voice these very ideas aloud.

Marion felt out-of-sorts, but spent of anger. She wanted to be able to take Geis on head-on, as Clem might in a boxing ring. She wanted to hand-letter a notice advertising the Nightwatch and leave it lying about where a German might find it (such as among the dated magazines at Ginny Glasson's shop) and carry it to someone in command that it might outrage.

She wanted an outlet of defiance, but could see none open to her, and with the day barely begun (much less the night coming on) she could not even release her raging sentiments out onto the open (but forbidden) airwaves.

She thought quite suddenly of children that might come from such a union. Of the fact that she would have to alter her name to Marion Gisbonnhoffer.

_Would such children, like Hardy's Tess', be "Sorrow"?_ What sort of mother could she, Marion, be to such children? Conceived against her desire, in an act absent her free, unfettered will? Children never able to truly know their mother - only this shade she maintained in front of Geis. This shade she would have to maintain even in front of them. _What sort of people might that birth?_

**No. **

Children, at least, she could prevent. Eva had once confided in her as much (as one high profile Jerry-bag to another) - that Hilda had the means to protect against such eventualities.

Very well. That was then decided: there would be no children from such a marriage. She was research-savvy enough to concoct a medical backstory of some reliability to explain Gisbonnhoffer finding himself with a barren wife for who even the most advanced medical treatments for fertility would fail. (Though of course it might be some time before that information would need come into play.)

_It might be years._

She tried not to think about years.

Marion knew herself well enough to know she was not of a romantic bent, with no reason (which she would credit) to worry that the day might come (war over or not) when she might find herself loving someone of her own free will; of how a marriage of necessity might complicate such a development. Marion Nighten had loved only once, and the present closed condition of her heart left her firmly convinced she would never do so again.

* * *

><p><strong>LONDON - West End - Mayfair - Lord Nighten's Georgian Townhouse - Late Summer 1937 - "<strong>Chin up, Tigs," Clem was urging her, the rumble of laughter dancing about in the bass timbre of his voice. "You look positively green about the gills!"

They were at the dining table, a small but formal party which included the Earl of Huntingdon and his heir the Viscount. Clem was at her elbow. Her gown was satin, a cool mint - nearly silver - green.

Therefore a green complexion might at least be pleasing to the eye in such a situation. Despite what it might say of the state of the mind resting behind it.

"I say," Clem barked with the early on-set of celebration, his glass already raised even as he was standing to join Robin Oxley who had already stood for making his wholly unexpected announcement, "bold as brass, Rob! Or shall I say, now, '_Brother_' Goodfellow?"

Marion felt more than saw her mother's brows draw together in distaste for Clem's repeated usage of common slang. Cockney rhymes had no place at Lord Nighten's civilized table.

Inured to his mother's disapproval in this particular habit of his, "To Tigs and Goodfellow!" Clem sang out.

"To _Marion_ and _Robert_," Sir Edward said, his tone deliberate and crisp with propriety as he interjected the more appropriate names of the couple whose engagement was about to be toasted, his glass raised.

Robin Oxley's face, having burst into redness and unaccustomed near-flummox the moment he got his news out, maintained its high coloring above his impeccably starched white collar and tie.

Marion watched only him as the others toasted.

He looked to her as though he had just taken the Argent Arrow, soundly trounced the challenger in the Tripp Club's storied cricket match. And surely the men at table were congratulating him in similar fashion.

_She_ felt more like she had been struck without warning by an arrow - pinned into a situation she was not expecting, for which she was not fully prepared.

_Not yet._

Robin's eyes searched hers out repeatedly, wishing to join with hers in this happy moment, but each time she refused to make hers available to him. Only returning to look at him when his attention was settled elsewhere.

Upon the conclusion of the toasts, the men of the party bore him away like a national hero into the smoking room, laughing, still congratulating, and Clem slapping his back so much it was sure to bear the bruises of impact tomorrow.

_She _was left in the far-more sedate parlor with her mother, the Earl's dinner partner (invited by her mother to keep numbers even) Lady Lytton, and Clem's present paramour, French-born Lise Montrose.

It was short moments before Marion realized, swirling about her, that although their conversation revolved around _her_, around her wedding, it did not include her in any way.

In fact, Marion had never felt quite so superfluous to any occasion in her life.

She sat through what seemed like three-quarters of an hour of it, but which might have been nothing more than ten minutes all told, marveling at this French girl who had more ideas about bridal style and betrothal presentation than any unengaged girl really ought be possessed of.

Marion excused herself as if to the powder room, intending to walk just about anywhere else within the house - most preferably several floors away.

She had gotten as far as the second floor, beyond the large for-show stair, and down a hall. Even so, it was a main hall: wide as rooms in a poorer family's house, ornamented here and there with furniture for sitting, potted plants and objets d'art for observing. It was, of course, the standard by which all other passageways in Mayfair townhouses were to be measured (and in comparison found wanting), the arrangement and placement of the furniture, and the art on display overseen closely by her mother. But Marion felt the need to locate herself somewhere more intimate, the walls closer, the ceiling lower. Less art, less formality in the cushions upon chairs. None of the doors in this part of the house would give her that: she must ascend higher. Such a room as she sought would leave her feeling cozier: less alone, less like someone perhaps cut loose and soon to be adrift. Closer quarters would feel of a smaller world, a world more able to be managed.

* * *

><p>Shortly, she heard a sound, the sort of sound no discreet member of the Nighten staff would ever make. In response she stopped dead-center in the upper-floor hall.<p>

It was not a loud sound. It was both the sound of someone practiced at sneaking about, but also practiced in knowing how to sneak about in this very house. Usually with the help of Clem's man, Percival.

"Marion, I _will_ follow you to your bedchamber if necessary." Robin's voice was low, but neither flirtatious nor fully-threatening. It was both patient and impatient at once.

In her present mood, her reply could be nothing but arch. Even as she turned 'round toward him, she did so only in anticipation of wheeling about again, leaving him only her impeccably straight back with which to discourse.

"Is that to be the way, then, of things from now on?" she asked, not bridling the acid in her tone, despite the fact she well knew he could not bear to be spoken to in such a way, a tone of disdain the fastest route to stoppering his ears, and severing his willingness to listen. "You, to make the decisions unilaterally? And me, left to swim about hoping to locate a calm amongst your wake?"

Robin let out a breath that showed this was not at all the reception he had expected to meet with. "You are cross with me!" he cried in confused surprise.

She watched his face, even though she did not mean to do so. (She was supposed to be pivoting on her heel and turning her back to him.) _But it was such a face!_ And even in her irritation, the lines about his eyes that telegraphed that her mood had somehow hurt him startled her, surprising her in their ability to do so.

"You _cannot_ be cross with me," he pleaded, his tone half-amazement that she was so, "this night of all nights!" There was almost an unvoiced laugh to it, but a disbelieving one.

Her response was at her lips as though she had been at rehearsing it for half of the hour past. "I most certainly can be cross with anyone whenever I feel like it."

His face came to a stop. He paused a moment as if to study this reply.

Marion stood, watching him, undistracted by their surroundings, unable (she felt) to pull back on her reaction to him, but similarly unable to execute that dramatic turn of her back toward him and walk away.

Robin spoke now like a detective in a stage mystery, as though he were in the very act of discovering the answer. "But what could there be about tonight to possibly make you cross?" he said, and she could tell he was fighting against the urge to bury his knuckles in the hair at the nape of his neck as aid to his thought process. The way he must have done when cribbing for an exam at university.

But raising his elbow so was sure to put his jacket and shirttails a-jumble. And though Robin Oxley was a man with a singular ability to focus in life - and she did not doubt he was focusing just so, here - he was never one to work against the good tailoring of a stylishly cut dinner jacket.

She saw the way the backs of his fingers (never gladly idle) itched at the pad on his thumb.

"I have snuck away from the cigars just to be with you, to find you - that we might…be together!"

She looked at him and wondered for a moment if she ought to point out the distinct unpleasantness of finding oneself compared by one's love to a round of cigars. Even if, in the end, one did win out over the smoking. She let it pass, zeroing in on the heart of her irritation instead.

"How _could_ you not have gone to my father before announcing us to everyone?"

She could not see the hurt that flooded her own face at this question.

"How could you wound his pride - his feeling of decency and appropriateness - so? I thought - I thought you and I had agreed to devise a stratagem to use when approaching him, how to handle your request. How to make him feel…_included_."

Her annoyance had caused her to over-speak, beyond the single first question. She did not like it when discourse got out of hand and what had, in her mind, seemed reasonable and succinct - and wholly justified - now sounded defensive and if not rambling, then long-winded.

Robin observed her as she spoke. His brow did not fully crease, but began to steeple in tension, sympathetic to her own.

He did not speak it, but she could read it in his face, his internal curiosity over the double standard she had represented to him since the day he had officially proposed upon returning from France and taking that knee at the Needle: that she was Lady Marion Nighten, a girl who did not in any way feel she needed her father's assent to her choice of a marriageable young man, and yet that she should so ardently pursue capturing it, with all the gusto and planning one might put in to a successful coup d'état. In very much a similar way insuring a smooth transition of power, keeping the country stable and economically viable. And the former leader - though blind-sided - passively content.

Then Robin smiled, more than a little pleased with himself. She could not understand why, but he seemed to feel he had captured the upper hand. "Why, I daresay he felt most included. One-hundred and ten percent a necessary cog in the process. The very spindle by which all others must be turned."

Her brow furrowed. She failed to see how springing such an announcement on her father as dinner concluded would make him feel at all involved in the making of it, for all that the announcement took place in his own home. Robin's grasp of situations was not usually so muddled.

"But without us holding that war council? Agreeing on a plan?" she railed, wondering why he could not understand her irritation in the matter.

She exhaled a scoff as she looked at him, perfect in his presentation, only that small dint in his bow knot to testify to his humanity, to prove he was not merely a walking, talking advertisement for Savile Row, or worse yet, his own newsprint photo from the society page. Charm and dash, position and rank, more than a little devil-may-care, and all the things that could get a gentleman of nobility so very far in life and yet leave him with so little substance to show for it.

"_Had_ you any plan? Any thought behind your actions? Or merely that you wished the attention, the _glory_ of standing up at a dinner and shocking them all within an inch of their very lives at your brazen disregard for their feelings?" She did not try to hold anything back. She feared a lifetime of such disagreements. "For _my_ feelings?"

She did not know where that last question had come from.

_Her_ feelings? This wasn't about _her_ feelings. It was about Robin. Choosing to behave one-sidedly. Selfishly ignoring the gentlemanly decorum that was so important to her father - in favor of speed and flash.

Speed and flash: Robin Oxley's maxim, no doubt, hidden somewhere amongst the Huntingdon flora upon the family crest.

Abruptly, she saw Robin's face flow from growing confusion to understanding, like water that has been troubled but becalms instantly.

"My sweet Marion," he said, his shoulders visibly relaxing. His hands wanted to immediately reach for hers but for the moment thought better of it. "The axis about which my universe heretofore rotates. I did meet, most solemnly, yesterday afternoon with your esteemed father. In this very house. I have done nothing - behaved in no way - without his express consent." Mouth closed, his lower lips pushed into his upper, his lids lifting his eyebrows in a 'how will she take it' gesture.

"You-" she stalled out, still distracted over her own lips saying that Robin had hurt _her_ feelings. "You were here, visiting with Father? I must have, I didn't know. I was-"

And here he grinned, enjoying the rare treat of calling her out. He glanced to the side of their standing confrontation and she could see him wishing to drop onto the nearby settee in a manner that would be a positive affront to both the fixture's pedigree and planned utility. But he did not.

"_You_ were sleeping," he teased. "Or so I was informed upon my arrival. Assuming that 'not receiving visitors' at one in the afternoon means to your staff what it does to my fathers'."

"But you met with him alone-" she stammered, finding it hard to come down from her well-kindled frustration, "and without a plan-"

"Not at all," his response was smooth, like a seasoned trainer approaching a nervous filly. He knew what he was up against now. Knew just how to combat it. "I brought my second, a man revered in his own right."

"Bonchurch?" she asked, incredulous. "Who reveres _Bonchurch_?"

"'Twas the Earl, Marion. I brought _the Earl_ to plead my case. To his closest friend."

She got lost for a moment, sidetracked in contemplating the unnamable frothiness that appeared in his eyes when he got the chance to counter an expectation as he just had.

"And did he?" she startled herself back into the moment. Back, she hoped, toward the well-earned righteous indignation she had been feeling toward him.

"Well, he was a bit hard on me when it came to character references - rightly so, I do not begrudge him it. But he kept the lion's-share of his reservations to himself. Bless him for that. Though he argued nothing quite so eloquently as your own mother." He went on, without pause. "The whole thing exhausted one as though we were at line-by-line-ing upon drafting a peace treaty."

"My _mother_?"

"Lady Nighten was a wonder," Robin shared in praise. "I daresay she could coax a rusted zipper back onto its tracks with nothing save the wax of her eloquence. I daresay I have never heard her speak so articulately upon _any_ subject in _my _life."

Marion's mind snapped to suspicion. "What on earth did she say? Something about how they'd best accept you as they may never get another offer? About how pleased she was I'd settled on a future Earl?"

Robin suppressed a half-smile, listing out the main points of Lady Nighten's pitch. "She said that it would be a crime against Love, and against your own will to refuse to bless our marriage. And that Edward should be happy to know that you had made your choice, rather than him having to guess at mapping out your marital future for you. That no one had believed in her and your father's romance, and that it was _their_ duty in their turn to believe always in other impractical couplings. And that he should be dead chuffed you'd snagged yourself a rich Duke. I mean an _Earl_. And that I should drink less and kiss you more."

"Did _not_." She did not realize that her own shoulders were relaxing at the sound of his voice and content of his speech. That she was no longer trying to recall to herself that it was her intent to turn and walk away.

"No," he agreed that he had fabricated the last part, "but I saw the end of my drinking days in her eyes, Marion - much as I see them in yours. And it is not an unhappy vision, I might report." He smiled. _The end of his drinking days in her eyes_. It was at once a line and yet not a line. With Marion, he had happily discovered he could speak such things and actually mean them. And yet, what would have left other girls already a-swoon, with Marion oft proved little more than opening ice-breakers she lived to shoot down.

"And so you met with my father, my mother, and _your_ father-" she scoffed, "was Clem there, too?"

"Murder, no!" Robin reacted. "Clem? Helpful at trying to influence _your_ father? A grim proposition, that. He cannot even get his pocket money increased. I doubt he shall have such champions on his side when it comes time for him to ask to marry - the lovely Lise Montrose or whomever else is to come…"

But Marion had managed to find her way back to being snappish. Recalling to her mind Lise Montrose at present planning her nuptials with her mother and Lady Lytton had helped the transition. "So you found you didn't need me. That you could manage this on your own. And so you did."

"Marion-" Robin almost laughed with the name, so deliberately she tried to misconstrue his actions, "you willfully misunderstand. I did this on my own FOR you, not _without_ you."

And then, there was no longer any laughter. This was a serious thing to him, a thing of planning and intention. It was important that she see that. That Marion - that his _fiancée_ - not walk away from him this night without understanding him. Believing him to be something in this instance that he was not. "To surprise you. To show you that I could be depended upon. That I could behave in a civil manner. That I could, if need be - if only for an hour or so - be the man your father wants to see his daughter marry. I did it for _you_." His eyes had begun to threaten to fill with water, so much did he want her to understand the difference between what she thought he had done, and what he had meant to be at doing.

"I love you, Marion," he said. "I want nothing more in life than your counsel and company at every turn. But _this_, I - I wished to do this _for_ you. To prove myself not worthless, as you are so frequently encouraging me to do."

And there it was. And she could not deny it, even as it was couched in an almost boyish combination of tearful frustration that Robin be taken seriously. That he had found a task, however brief, however negligible, that he could manage - command, even, on his own. It had been but a few hours' occupation (at best) in which he had to employ his charm and manners in defense and promotion of himself. But he had done so, he had won over her father. He had chosen the right voices for the task, the Earl and her mother. He had not been trying to exclude her from this moment, or from moments in the future. He had been trying to show her something of what he could be. To prove that she might reliably depend upon him. That she was not making a giant mistake marrying a man who spent more hours behind a nightclub's table than behind a desk, who spoke of politics only in private (and only when she brought the subject up) and never in public, who - like much of his generation - had never been in charge of anything or completed a single important undertaking in life since leaving university.

"Kiss me," she said, seeing this, understanding this. Understanding him. "_Now_. Kiss me _now_."

"But downstairs, the Earl, he has a bracelet of my mother's - it's - meant now to be yours," he said, "and he - " he cast an eye backwards from whence he had come, as though able to see the Earl waiting to make the gift of it to Marion, his newly-engaged son watching on.

"Stop talking, oh," she told him, crossing the short distance between them, her hands reaching up for his closely-shaven cheeks like a child reaching out for promised sweets. "Must you _always_ be thinking of decorum? Just…_stop_ talking."

* * *

><p>Marion had gone to her bedroom to further weigh the logistics of Geis' proposal; outside the Nightwatch windmill the closest place to a sanctuary she might have anywhere on the island.<p>

She felt dull - as opposed to bright, cloudy with lack of polish. She felt of one fighting so hard to save part of herself, to keep part of Marion living within her. The Marion she had liked being. The Marion that had once, long ago, been loved. Been loveable.

And now, here, all that she was about to become, all lightness and possibility of joy to be subtracted from her. Deficit from the start. And she now doubted that she had ever had that much in her to begin with - not left on her own. She had needed another to draw it out of her, to open her up like a bottle of wine set out to breathe, as a bottle of champagne cannot bubble without a corkscrew's turn.

Certainly not a task of complementing her to which Geis Gisbonnhoffer was much suited. Or would ever prove much suited.

Her, married to _Schutzstaffel_.

War or no war - rather, war on or war ended - it would not change who Geis was, what he had chosen to stand for, to stand with. It seemed a stark inequality, that Geis might be allowed to embody who he was indefinitely, and yet she, Marion, felt remade by each new cruelty practiced upon these islands, every imposition upon her person, and that now, here she was, contemplating her own complicity in accepting the tainted mantle of Lieutenant Geis Gisbonnhoffer's wife; an unseverable connection. Linked to him 'til the end of life. Blessed by clergy, the bond real even if the wife who entered into it was, in many ways not. At least, was no longer. _Real_.

Which had brought her here, now arrived in a room with her father. The only conduit to wisdom she might find. But he was locked away today, absent from her, his mind a jumbled morass of truth aligned wrongly with time. He thought them on holiday, believed they had just arrived at Barnsdale from London, himself tired from the journey.

She continued to watch as he slept.

She knew what he would answer her.

She knew it like she knew her sums. The only question to ask in any situation. In every situation. It had gotten him through much in his Parliamentary career, even in his private life: "How can I do the most good?"

And there it was. _The only possible answer_. Rebelling against Gisbonnhoffer's desire to wed her would do no good at all, not for her personally. And it would benefit no one else, either. She would lose her home, her father (who would also lose his home). She would lose access to and ability to perform the Nightwatch.

Her refusal would come from a purely personal desire. In this place where personal desire brought one not among those in power nothing.

As Frau Gisbonnhoffer she could largely go on as she now did. She could find a way to continue the Nightwatch, she could stay in her home, her father could stay. They would be cared for. They would not go hungry. As Geis' family they would be protected. The food laid in at Barnsdale could go missing in small enough amounts, distributed among the nearby islanders. If caught out she could convince Guy that this was yet another English custom: a landed noble caring for his tenant neighbors. She could continue to build on what she had begun here.

She could take this, and do good with it.

One might - one _must_ - find something of cheerful contentment in that.

Someday.

* * *

><p><strong>SOUTH AMERICA - Brasil - Salvador da Bahia - Hotel de Curacao -<strong> **1954** - When Eleri again slept, the hour of his own waking not fully past, Allen Dale slipped from her embrace and silently dressed. (Old-hat tasks in his life at which he was more than proficient. Slipping out and away from a girl's bed - and her arms - at all hours, dressing silently so as not to awaken drowsy, exhausted lovers.)

With the memory of long ago practice quickly returning to his limbs he lowered himself down from the upper floor balcony of his hotel room onto the darkness of the side alley below. He was seen by no one as he briskly left the Hotel de Curacao behind, able to locate just the right pools of darkness to obscure his journey out into the night.

He wore double clothing, two jumpers, two pair of trousers - for his work this night would likely prove a messy task, and his training recalled to him the potential necessity of shedding and casting-off layers quickly when needs must.

He could not have said how he knew that Gisbonnhoffer would also have been unable to sleep during the time of the Nightwatch, but in this belief Allen was not disappointed.

Taller than many of the Brazilian locals, Gisbonnhoffer was to be spotted easily enough among the raucous, all-night celebrations still carrying on (though with less energy, now) down in view of the Bay, not far from where Eleri had said his family traditionally took their rooms.

The moon was full enough to see by; lights and electric in scarce supply this close to the water. Clumps of people gathered, tall torches struck in the sand for light. From time to time a group would go a-marching, instruments to the front, crowd following in various stages of dance.

The noise, echoing off the Bay, could be heard at a great distance. Some present even had guns, shooting them off into the air (hopefully, into the air) in sporadic, explosive celebration.

As far as police presence, there was none to be seen, sensible locals having gone to bed long ago (peace officers having apparently joined them), their own revels concluded, no need to stretch them out further, squeeze at the dregs of joy any longer. Time for the celibate, sober Lenten-like days to come.

The sound of those left had become a wheezy sort of noise, the voices singing slurred but still raucous, loud by turns.

Carnaval was in its dying moments, but these celebrants would be here to make merry a little longer, until sunrise marked the true and final end.

Allen found another spot of shadow and observed. Gisbonnhoffer was among the revelers, yes, but though he maneuvered around and amongst them, he was like a sleepwalker: present, but absent. He spoke to, engaged with, none of them. They must have realized earlier that to invite him to do so was futile. None of them reached out toward him, either. Certainly he was not taking part in their celebration. It seemed more that he and they merely occupied the same geographical space. Then again, there were plenty of stoned-to-silence drunks among their jolly numbers, and they may well have simply taken him for another.

Allen waited for another song to strike up (his patience surprising even himself), for the press of bodies to come to a fuller boil of motion and dance and fever and the tangle of outrageous attire.

When Gisbonnhoffer walked into a swell of this, Allen found his moment. Knowing better than the trapped-in-the-chaos ex-German how to navigate slickly in and out of the press of a crowd, he sidled up to the back of the former Lieutenant and discharged his gun into Geis' back twice. Once to the liver and once to the lung, close enough to the heart to shortly matter, the shot to the liver (as he had been trained, as he had learned oh-so-well) just-so to sever the necessary artery.

There was no reaction among the crowd to the muffled gunfire. The drums and horns thudded and sang on in bright, brass joy. In celebration.

In the moment before Gisbonnhoffer could drop to his knees, Allen leaned toward his enemy's ear, and without showing the man he had just killed his face, hissed, his spotty-since-the-war German coming back to him in a burst of fluency: "'Twas Anya Grigorovna who stole the flier from you. Who _bested_ you." He wasted no time on assigning Gisbonnhoffer German slurs, the saying of which would only lengthen his speech. "In her name I revenge her upon you. Know _this _as your punishment: where you're going you'll _never _see Marion again. You'll not live long enough to speak her name."

For several beats the music and the crowd dancing to it bore Gisbonnhoffer forward, keeping him upright and unable to fall. Allen hung back, expertly slithering his way out of the tangle of people, only pausing to glance back once he was in the safety of the shadow cast by a beach shack.

The impromptu parade of Carnaval celebrants marched on. Two or three men who had overindulged to the point of unconsciousness lay strewn in their wake. And one man — not at all dressed for such festivities - looking very little of the other revelers - had fallen, glassy-eyed and lifeless, blood draining from his lips onto the sand; friendless, alone, his mouth empty, even, of a last word; blessing, or curse.

* * *

><p>Allen Dale found his way back up to his rooms' balcony at the Hotel de Curacao nearly as easily as he had found his way down from it, his injured-but-healing foot (though far from comfortable) giving him trouble only here and there, but seeing a light now on within that room he paused, his back against the building's wall, the curtain shielding him from what, or rather whom, was beyond. Other than from the natural exertion to be expected from scaling the wall to this height, his heart did not race. His hands did not shake.<p>

He noticed this, inspected his right hand and trigger finger there in the dark, for a moment closed his eyes and breathed in as he held them in his left hand. And began to observe the woman walking about the room beyond the veil-like, thinly translucent curtain.

**...TBC...  
><strong>in Part Two of Chapter 23 "_How Do You Say to a Girl_"...


	27. Chapter 24 - Proposals

[_Excerpted out from ongoing linear recollection narrative, as an aside of several pages' length_]

"I find myself reflecting today on proposals. Those voiced and unvoiced. I have never formally proposed either love or marriage to any woman. And in my former life and station would never need have done so either; never need have waited upon pins and needles to learn a hoped-for response.

As I have written prior, it was from an early age our parents and larger family had settled upon us their hopes and wishes for our future together. But the young girl of appropriate nobility and title I had known by the age of ten was to one day be my future wife has long ago vanished, most likely murdered by the Reds, or by them been disappeared so that she would never easily be found again.

And the Empire in which we two were meant to share, and into which we were meant to bring further children - to make further matches among them to secure that aristocracy's future - it all lies among the ashes in Ekaterinberg.

The only choice in pairing that was ever meant to be my own was to have been that of choosing mistresses, and I can say that even at a fairly early age I understood this, as talk of such affairs and alliances at Court (and among Court) was never veiled enough to evade even the youngest of ears. I suppose I had assumed that in time, such a role - such a choice - would also fall to me.

A wife to husband, to give children. A mistress for love and companionship.

Indeed, the only role I have ever truly played in any betrothal or wedding occurred long years ago now, on a small island whose short name you are unlikely to recall (and I, unlikely to forget), during the dark days of war when I was most unexpectedly asked to partner a bride as her honored second. There was no question at that time of my agreement or disagreement with the marriage about to be performed. I was there only to watch on, to stand witness to its happening. There were no choices for me to make in the matter. And if there had been I could not say, even now, what my thoughts on it would have been. _Was it a foolish act, to enter into such an alliance at such a time? Was it, instead, a perfect coming-together of two who were frequently (and again, ultimately) torn apart?_

I do not know what that groom's proposal to that bride may have looked or sounded like, but the service through which they bound themselves to one another did show me that some pairings need no pomp, no well-wishers in attendance to solemnize their union.

And when the question was posed, "who giveth this woman to be married to this man?" 'The Lord Himself,' was all the answer as I could muster. _For what could I say?_ The lost mercenary, the matroishka riddle, for whom love had long been a mystery? For whom emotional connection remained out of reach, a code I could not crack?

She was not mine to give, and her own father dead only hours before. I had spoken the line, delivered her hands into the hands of her lover, and stepped back, away from their happiness, (_what else might I have done?_) sharing a gaze with _his_ second, who, much like me, doubted of ever finding himself in such a situation.

Ever-doubted making or receiving such a proposal.

We two were citizens without a country, souls without a Paradise, he and I. Mules among thoroughbreds. Able to watch on, but not participate.

You are grown now, Zara, children of your own, your choices in love and marriage made. And so you will know that for every proposal between a man and a woman that requires both question and answer, there are other ways to propose, and unvoiced answers strong as spoken word.

Perhaps stronger.

[_written off into the margin_] I will understand if you would rather elide what is next to come. But then, if you do, you will miss learning more about your mother. And so I hope you will read on, and not shutter your eyes out of any misplaced sense of propriety or modesty regarding my - or her - physical person. [_end margin note_]

It was this way for me with your mother. I was not inexperienced with women when we met, but I had never been the kind of man to keep to only one, much less to form a strong or lasting attachment. Girls were like days on a calendar. There were many to choose from, to experience, and then from which to move on. It was my way. I was no Lothario, and I rarely pursued women, preferring to hang back at social occasions as they perhaps sought me out. Of the women I did take out only rarely was there one with whom I shared anything physical - much less personal.

I don't actually recall meeting your mother. Once we had been together for a while it seemed as though she had always been there, on the fringes of my vision, but never wholly in focus. We carried on, going out, meeting at parties - but I never brought her home, never did introduce her as mine, never discussed a future with her.

And these (now obvious) slights she never threw at me, never demanded a named position in my life.

Certainly I knew I could not propose marriage - a life together with her - because she deserved a husband who could love her, who could put her first as she so often put others - put me. I don't know what I thought I was doing, where I thought our stepping out was headed. She was younger than I; perhaps I thought or tried to convince myself that for her it was but a fling before settling down elsewhere.

She was not as traveled as was I. She had come to this country as a small child, her culture second-hand, and that taught and lived by her parents and large family. Her family's mother tongue learned in tandem with American English. In experience I thought myself the wiser.

And yet, it was she who decoded the proposals my physical self began making as our farewell kisses grew heated and began occurring long before we were meant to part of an evening. It was Tasha who accepted these proposals without a word of explanation, without a trace of uncertainty. It was Tasha who, in her kindness, in her love, transformed that yearning into action. It was Tasha who said yes without ever speaking.

I had been to her parents' home several times (it being easier then for a man to keep the girl he was seeing from his own family than for a girl to likewise do so), met them and her grandparents, so it was not overly unusual when she invited me for the evening, telling me to come in by the back kitchen door as (she said) something or other needed repairing on their front, street-side door.

Upon arrival I was more than a little surprised to find no one else home. It was a large house, and generally filled to the brim with brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts and uncles. But that night it was so quiet as to be eerie. We sat for a while in the kitchen, wary, perhaps, of the view we might make in the front picture window, perhaps awkward with each other when so alone.

I don't know what we spoke of. Perhaps we spoke not at all. The normalcy of other voices around us, whether it be at the pictures or in a diner or in the front living room, usually filling in the gaps and silences in our own communication.

There was nothing special or remarkable about Tasha that night more than any other: no glow or particularly special care taken in her toilet, despite what the nostalgia of time might trick me into believing now.

I cannot recall what had taken her family away from home that night, and for such a lengthy time. Nor do I recall how she managed to avoid being in attendance with them.

We sat awhile and listened to the kitchen radio. The family's partyline rang, but the ring showed it was not for them, and so we ignored it. A news broadcast came on the radio and I listened intently as it outlined the worsening situation in Europe, and specifically between Finland and the new Russia. I began to fume, and felt that familiar anger boiling in me. It no longer seemed like much of a good night, and though we had planned to go out in the back yard and look at what few stars might be seen of a night in Hoboken, I announced that I was going, and stepped toward the back door, which was located after a short passage made quite narrow courtesy a shelf and added-on broom closet.

She followed me, I leaned to kiss her 'goodnight', and she responded.

I had meant only a single farewell kiss. And yet, without my consent, my physical self responded independent of what I understood my own will, in that moment, to be. As I said, the passageway was narrow. Though we had not been in a true embrace, we were, of necessity, as close as though we were in one, walls to each our backs, breath on skin. Surely she felt the change in me, as potently as I felt it within myself.

She kissed me as though she ardently wished me not to go. As though trying to convince me there was a very good and pressing reason to remain there, no matter my mood. At first it was not I who held on to that kiss, but she. And with that kiss she held me there, in that constricted limbo between the kitchen and back door.

I was not ignorant, naturally, of my attraction to her, of what amounted to my desire where making love was concerned. But I had not expected any such opportunity that evening, and as our nights out to that point had involved no such activities (or run-up to such activities), I had not intended, at that time, to suggest any.

I do not know if I consciously decided to stay in response to her kiss. I do know I began to kiss her again, and stopped taking inventory of how many times or where or for how long. I know that I was about to put my hands up to her face, to her hair, when she found them with hers and deliberately placed them on the buttons of her blouse.

Feeling the smooth material of the buttons against my fingertips I opened my eyes to see her, to understand. In response to my looking at her, she but momentarily pulled her mouth away from mine, gave the slightest of smiles, and instead placed my hands directly upon her.

At that we were _fait accompli_.

* * *

><p>I had been keeping company with no other girls at that time, and did not seek out other women until well after I had left the country for Finland's war. From that night on, she became (for that time, however brief it now seems in hindsight) my sole companion.<p>

Yet I did not think too much of leaving her, 'her youthful fling is over now,' I suppose I thought: 'she will find a man who can love her now, she will marry, and if I ever see her again it will be with his children on her hip. If I ever hear of her again it will be an aside by someone in passing, a woman I used to know when she had been a girl.' Of course I wished her well.

But then, I did not necessarily expect to return alive from the Winter War. I meant only to enlist as a way to burn out some of my anger, my hatred, and find a way to fight my enemies.

So I had ended the romance as it was, again without proposing we split or separate or see other people. I had ended it without a word to her. I had simply chosen my need for war over her love for me.

Once gone, I did not think much about her again."

- Thomas Carter, Notebook #22

* * *

><p>"...And then here was this Armstrong. A boy, really. And never having even gone (however briefly) for a soldier. Just a boy. Asking me, proposing to me that he might ask you to marry him. I had never expected to be in such a position.<p>

Not that I had expected to select your husband _for_ you. But here I was, certainly not finding him to be much of a choice for you. And yet with whom could I discuss such an occurrence? Not Tamara Sergeiovna, your Babushka. She would only spiral into talk of the old days, of your (non-existent in reality) position. Of her father's rank with the tsar. How you were meant for something, for someone better, your father a prince of the nobility.

The closest I had ever come to any thought along these lines or conversation about this aspect of your future had been with Allen Dale, the former Kommandant's driver, and that but a passing remark that week in 1954.

And then, but a sentence or two were exchanged.

I searched my mind. I could think of no indications you had ever given of interest in Armstrong. I thought of your age, what your future might best look like.

I told him my answer was no.

And he agreed not to pursue it.

And yet, that answer haunted me. Tugged at me over coffee, woke me of a night. In a way I never did, I longed for someone to talk to about it, but I could hardly bring it up to you without, in effect, proposing the idea for him, and that seemed far too backward.

I was a parent without a partner, which had ever been the case, only, I had never doubted my own insight. I had never before had to make a decision regarding you based on understanding or predicting love or the potential for love.

And so, after several days, I found myself thinking of your mother. Of what I knew of her. Of what I knew she would have wished for you. And she would have wished love for you, Zara. And she would have wanted you to have what she was for me: someone who would love you. Someone who could read the proposals, the needs in your eyes and in your mannerisms that your lips would never speak. Someone who could hold you not as a child, but as a woman.

She would want you to have the future of your own choosing.

And so I attacked the problem in the only way I knew how: I studied Armstrong day in day out as though I were working recon, as though I were studying aerial maps of future bombing runs. Looking for irregularities, observing day-to-day operations, amassing a dossier.

And after several weeks I stunned myself to realize that I had done something I never had expected to be able to do.

I recognized love.

I could see it. See it in his behavior toward you. Even, in his patience with me as his boss. I could understand that Armstrong loved you. Whether you loved him back was a question I knew myself still handicapped from answering. But if he loved you (and I now knew he did), then surely, I reasoned with myself, he had then the right to pitch marriage to you, and you to respond as was your will.

I waited as surely few fathers have ever waited to learn your answer to him. _Would you accept the love offered? Would you choose him? Were you - unlike me - able to see love and accept it and return it? _I found myself praying that you might: not because of any affection I had for that young man at the time, but because I needed you to be whole, to be able to love in a way I had never been.

Even if at the time I did not want Armstrong, I wanted you to find love. To know it when you saw it, to accept it and return it. I wanted for you, my child - for Tasha's daughter - the understanding and the experience I had been unable to claim."

- Thomas Carter, Notebook #27

* * *

><p><strong>LONDON - <strong>**_Ashby Court_**** - Town home of Sir Jeffrey Ashby, Lord Oakwood - The Season - 1908 - **Edward Nighten (Lord Nighten, or Sir Edward, if one wished to be proper about forms of address) stood in the little-seen foyer of Ashby Court and for a moment pondered: _how many Seasons had he come through?_

Easily two decade's worth, by his quick reckoning. But not a one that he could recall held at this particular address. No, no elaborate private balls for any ladies of Ashby Court. Then again, the Lords Oakwood were known (in that they were much known at all) for reliably producing only male offspring. There had not been a girl child born to the Ashby family in over thirty-five years.

Edward was not certain the town house was ever much-used. The Ashbys - he had been informed by someone (he could not recall whom) when discussing his planned attendance here - preferring their Welsh Country home Knotty Hemp to any of the pleasures London might offer.

And men, after all, were not much for entertaining, leastways not on the level of grand balls. The Lords Oakwood were a noble family, to be sure, but a retiring one for the most part. They found their wives among lesser, local nobility primarily situated in Wales (though one had wed himself a Cornishwoman, memory recalled) and were content to stay largely at home with untraveled wives more comfortable navigating the less-grand Society to be found distant from London and its ton.

The current Lord Oakwood, Sir Jeffrey, Edward had known - at least by name - some years ago. And Sir Jeffrey having inexplicably produced a female child nearly eighteen years ago, had sent Edward an invitation at his club (Nighten House in Mayfair almost as locked-up as Ashby Court was usually - save that Edward employed one man to tend the library, should he find the need of it when he was in town, and make a cold lunch should he need one whilst he pored over his books) requesting his attendance at a private ball to be held for this daughter, only just presented at Court.

Edward had found it easy to enjoy such occasions over the years - particularly once he had let the younger set tuck in to the matchmaking and pining with a fervor, and absented himself from the front lines of such pursuits.

Certainly there had been a good six to seven years there where he had been as much on his game as the next man, thinking he might pursue one young lady or another - perhaps even so far as the altar. But he had found soon enough that once he was grown out of his own twenties, the young ladies presented for the Season rarely held his attention for long. Though delightful (if brief) distractions they still proved, occasionally, to be.

Each Season there seemed a new royalty crowned: sweetest, largest dowry, highest ranking father, most daring of disposition; the list went on. And always, loveliest.

Such young ladies of the ton came and went, and anymore if he got to know them at all, it was in the years Post-Coming Out, when they received new names as wives to husbands and mothers to children, when their conversation had time to ripen into something more substantive.

This, of course, was not universally the case - that their thoughts and views would hold his interest. But it was so frequently enough for him to view the years' new crop still in a favorable light - as one might view a baby nursery, imagining those babes years later when one might converse with them in intelligible speech, and with a maturity and depth of reason.

Edward danced with them, though. Always agreeing to his part as a still-unmarried Lord of good character and solid income. Always made himself agreeable, if he could, to their mothers, who knew as well as did he that their daughters didn't really wish him for a partner in life (much less love), but would try (to please their mothers) to be civil during the dance and not cast their eyes too much in the direction of the younger, gayer men in attendance for that brief interval.

And in the end, they always would agree - with those mothers - that Lord Nighten was actually a very good dancer, and really, a lovely man to partner with.

But it was rare indeed that such a daughter would specially request Sir Edward be invited to a smaller social gathering, or a more intimate setting. He already had his seat in the House of Lords, after all. Oughtn't they give a younger chap a chance instead?

And so Edward dutifully attended, watching the events of the Season more as a spectator than a participant. He lived his bachelor life happily, finding affection and intimacy when he wished it in similar places to where many of his married friends did as well.

He was not a lonely man, and his company at such events, if not sought by men's daughters, was surely sought by their fathers, and often enough, their mothers and grandmothers. And there was juicy political thought at present; a bill forming that promised to enfranchise women in the vote - for which he had recently publicly declared his support. There would be plenty of conversation swirling about him tonight on such a topic.

As he took a step forward, he made a mental note of where the eldest and greyest ladies sat. Before taking his leave he would certainly wish to visit with them a moment and learn their thoughts on the matter.

Though little-used by its family, a quick review of Ashby Court showed no reason in the construction, architecture, or condition of the home itself to eschew the use of it. It was large and invitingly decorated (if a tad outdated to a lady's eye), and unlike Nighten House, boasted its own ballroom and salon.

Rooms were a-glow in candlelight. Dancing would soon begin, as the string quintet could be heard tuning up. Dinner would be served late, and no doubt opulently - all in celebration of the first Lady the house of Oakwood had produced to be presented to the Monarch in over three decades. Three decades of no dowries to be paid out to suitors, only monies and land to be accepted into the family. Sir Jeffrey could easily afford to spend generously on such an event. No tea and lemonade - no dry cake - here.

"Nighten," he heard at his shoulder, shortly after giving his cloak and hat over to the men serving at the door.

"What? Huntingdon!" he replied, pleased to find his friend already there. "I did not expect you out among society again 'til the Glorious Twelfth."

The bespectacled Robert, Earl of Huntingdon, smiled to see his dearest friend. "I confess," he explained, adjusting the black-rimmed glasses upon his nose, "the delight of seeing Ashby Court open again inspired my acceptance."

"You have come to review the architecture? Or your thoughts are turning to property acquisition?"

"Neither. Years ago, my mother grew a friendship with Lord Oakwood's mother, and I recall some of those occasions here in happy times."

"Ah," Edward ruminated, a softness in himself for such nostalgia in the relatively new but-already-fast-changing twentieth century, "It is a pleasure to see such a grand old house opened up again, filled with life."

"But have you not heard, gentleman?" arrived a third voice, that of Lord Brookewell, acquainted with them through the House of Lords, in which all three sat. "You may have been preoccupied during her presentation at Court, or perhaps you missed attending altogether - but we are all attendant this evening _merely_ to witness the transporting beauty of the Lady Miranda Ashby by candlelight. Nothing more, nothing less. _I_ shall not stand idly by whilst you two grey hairs attempt to discuss the merits of architecture or the exquisite port served - in place of such visual bliss."

"Well, now," the Earl of Huntingdon reminisced, casting his eyes to the ceiling in thought, "there was Lady Eileen Spence in aught-one. She was said to be so beautiful she could make a rose weep."

"Mmmm. Miss Jane Renault in ninety-six, Countess Trevold as she is now," Edward joined in.

"Said to be a par-_tic_-ular beauty, as I recall," Huntingdon agreed. "And briefly attached to you, I seem to also recollect."

"_Briefly_ would indeed be the word, though that would be before your time to recall such things," Edward referenced the age gap between himself and Robert. "She could not reconcile herself to the fact I had to miss the Henley Royal in favor of preparing for a speech on the floor." A glint of humor came into his eye, nearly a twinkle. "I do not think she mourned the loss of me long."

"It is a shame Parliament must sit whilst all this is in town to be had," the young Lord Brookewell observed morosely.

"Perhaps, Brookewell, you ought to think of our inconvenient sessions governing the Empire as a perfect reason to leave these sort of events _before_ you drink yourself into next-day woes."

"Oh, hush, Huntingdon. He will find himself a wife soon enough," Edward chid his oftimes wary-of-too-much-gaiety comrade, "and such long nights will be in his past, and he will settle, as they all do in time. Perhaps, even tonight, eh, Brookewell?"

Brookewell, only giving them half-an-ear from the start, had drifted away, toward a clutch of young men surrounding young ladies in a far corner of the room.

"Do I sound so dour to you?" Huntingdon asked, seeming concerned. "You are older than I, and long a single man - and yet you feel _I_ need admonishment in my attitude toward these proceedings?"

"Robert," Edward began, "you ought marry. You are clearly suited to it, and what is more, dissatisfied with life a bachelor. You need someone to balance your melancholia. I simply point out one ought not criticize a man ready to fall in love, when falling in love seems just what you need for yourself. That is all."

"And _your_self?"

"I am happy in my life. Quite satisfied. My brother has a son upon whom I shall settle my title and estate when the time comes, unless I find some irresistible widow with children before then whom I cannot live without. Until such time I have my books, I have my seat. I enjoy a concert and a good derby. The world is large, and it interests me. I am as busy as I should like to be, and not a jot more. I can leave London for Guernsey for months at a time. No one misses me, and I miss no one."

"And this is your description of a perfectly productive, content life?"

"It is."

Huntingdon went up slightly on his toes, craning his neck toward that distant clutch of young ladies. "I see Brookewell has sighted you out for the girl's chaperone. Here they come in a bee-line, ready to add your name to her dance card." He laughed slightly through his nose. "You are become a rite of passage, Edward. No lady is truly 'out' until they have taken a turn about the room on your arm, or in your embrace to a waltz."

"Ahem," Edward cleared his throat at the good-natured ribbing. "She will be wanting your name upon same card, I do not doubt."

"Yes," Robert agreed. "But unlike you, who is always charmingly aloof and grand, a single man whom the parents of all feel pleased to see their daughter partnering, I have no temperament for these young lovelies. I might as well be a fussy old granny to them, with them laughing at me and my spectacles behind their fluttering fans."

Both men abruptly straightened their posture as the aforementioned chaperone (a rather plump Countess related somewhat distantly to the Ashbys) arrived with her charge - and no less than six other gentlemen - in tow, including Brookewell.

"Lord Nighten," the Countess addressed Sir Edward's age and position in Society over the younger and less socially gallant Earl of Huntingdon's higher aristocratic station, "may I introduce Lady Miranda Ashby? Daughter of Lord Oakwood?" She indicated the girl next to her with her closed fan. The extravagant floral decorations lining the neck of her gown still shook with the uncertain - and still coming - breaths she had taken in her traverse across the floor to where he stood.

"Please consider me delighted to make your acquaintance," Edward began in reply, his eyes only just then moving away from their polite attention on the Countess toward Lady Miranda, whose opera-gloved hand was properly extended in correct greeting.

Instinctively he raised his own white-gloved hand toward hers.

"I believe Pa_pa_ was at school with you!" like other ladies of her station, Lady Miranda stressed the second syllable of her father's moniker.

"Was he?" Edward heard himself asking absently. "Yes, I suppose he might've been…several years behind…" School had been such a large place, and so very long ago.

"I am so very pleased to know you," Lady Miranda went on, her own gown showing none of the affectation or over-styling of her chaperone's. "I should very much like to discuss why you reversed your decision last week from the vote you cast two years ago against further empowering labor unions." Her eyebrows were dark against her unflawed, alabaster skin, and drew together in checked concern. "Do you not fear alienating the other peers?"

Any ready-response caught in his throat. "You know my voting record?" Edward asked, but in a voice so soft it was more like a whispered goodnight.

He could only assume that she had heard it, though, for directly her eyes - still clapped on to his - widened in a sort of un-wink and his heart and breath actually both snagged for the shortest moment. And then she was gone - in a cloud of potential suitors held at bay only by the Countess, and he had not signed her dance card, and neither, in fact, had Huntingdon.

And he found he did not know what to do next, nor which direction to turn, and so he looked about for the man who might prove to be Sir Jeffrey Ashby, Lord Oakwood, the closest thing to this Lady Miranda (this unexpected whirlwind of pertinent query) - to see if they truly _did_ share an alma mater.

* * *

><p>Lady Miranda had proved hard to sight for the remainder of her ball; when she was not dancing rather fleetly in the ballroom, she was surrounded by such a cloud of suitors there was no view of her at all. The top of the Countess' garishly elaborate coiffure was all that might be seen to indicate where her charge was located.<p>

* * *

><p>The papers printed enough about Lady Miranda, though. Sketches of her, her gowns, lists and dossiers of the gentlemen in pursuit of her. The endless speculation over to whom she had sent the dance card from her ball would not abate. When among Society, little else was spoken of. When would she settle upon that single suitor with whom to keep company?<p>

* * *

><p>It was not an easy thing to acquaint oneself - to <em>truly<em> acquaint oneself - with a young lady when among Society, even during the Season. How much could one learn during the course of a single dance? Gentlemen were only ever allowed, at most, three dances at any ball with a single girl, and those never consecutively.

And there was no question of privacy. The Countess ever-present, save during the course of said dance, when one's feet and legs threatened to flummox one's tongue from doing its best job.

Edward did, weeks later, find himself dancing with Lady Miranda. He thought to speak about her father, about the fact he had learned, in truth, that he and Sir Jeffrey _had_ attended the same school. But he had been a quiet boy, pining by turns for Guernsey and home there, and not given to much society - and certainly not the society of the younger boys, of which Sir Jeffery, in truth, had been one of the youngest.

He was nearly finished with his short tale of school and her father when he caught himself, feeling (in a way he usually did not) rather dull company, when he remarked in throw-away, "ah well, it is nothing. Soon enough I shall depart again for a long stay in Guernsey and bore young ladies of the ton no more with my long-windedness."

The dance was nearly concluded. Lady Miranda's card had no further lines available upon it.

"Sir Edward," she looked at him in response to his self-degrading comment. "Let us have no false modesty here." She almost looked slightly in wonder at him. "You are the most engaging, and easily the most interesting man in this room, or any other room of which I have seen the inside in long months."

As a couple they swept to a halt as the music concluded, and a young man (younger than him by far) arrived to claim the next dance.

Lady Miranda's attention was appropriately upon the new arrival, so much so that Edward found himself disagreeing inside his own head over whether he thought what he had heard was really what he had heard.

* * *

><p>It was not long after that Lady Miranda found herself indisposed. This was to be expected, of course, as any man of the world knew and understood: every three to four weeks - even during the Season - a young lady would find herself indisposed to the receiving of company and the attendance of social events for a brief period of time.<p>

But by Edward's accounting, Lady Miranda's absence had begun to drag on. Two weeks and she had not left Ashby Court, nor received visitors. He began (though he could not have said why) to fret, to worry about her good health.

It distracted him when he was reading. It caused his mind to wander during parliamentary sessions. It nearly made him into a gossip, so closely did he find himself eavesdropping whenever a situation might arise in which her name might be mentioned.

At his wits' end, and determined to stop in and leave a copy of a recent leaflet he felt would possibly interest her, he found himself ushered in to the foyer of Ashby Court. He saw on the table that held the silver tray for such things no less than fourteen cards from other gentlemen callers just (he had to confess) like himself, and a large number of hot house flowers in vases and some even still in their boxes, as it appeared the house had run out of containers in which to showcase them.

He felt relieved he had no flowers in hand.

As the footman approached him, he readied his own card to place atop the pamphlet he meant to leave with his best wishes. It was eminently clear that she was still quite indisposed and not at home to visitors.

But the footman waved him off, refusing (thought politely) to take either his card or the printed flyer.

"Do follow me, Sir," he said, and Edward - confused, did as he was bid, following the servant up a stair and through a door into a small sitting room on the family-only level of the townhouse.

"Sir Edward," he heard before he fully saw her: Lady Miranda upon a chaise, beneath several shawls layered upon her lap.

He nearly gasped in surprise.

"Lady Miranda," he greeted her. "I had not thought to see you today."

"Now, surely, you must be teasing. You have come some distance away from both club and home to Ashby Court. Was it, then, my father you wished to see?"

"No, of course - that is," he was turning into a stammering young man in the face of her unexpected appearance here. "Downstairs, there are…several…_other_ gentlemen's cards. I presumed only to add my own to the growing stack."

She smiled. Her face was somewhat lacking in color upon second glance. And she did seem smaller, somehow, than he had remembered her. He made note of the fact that under those shawls her feet were stretched out upon the chaise, and not flat to the floor. It was a risque posture in which to receive a gentleman, but also one common to an invalid.

He heard a throat clear in the corner behind him and turned to see one of the senior housemaids seated in the half-shadow, clearly meant to be keeping chaperone over the young lady of the house.

He thought to come to the point, not wishing to cause Lady Miranda any inconvenience with either her health or her father.

"I have brought you something I thought you might wish to read," he offered. "A pamphlet on the recent unpleasantness in Carr Street."

"Who has authored it?"  
>"A colleague of mine. He was present until such time as the police arrived."<p>

"But _then_ he left?"

"Yes. That is the account he gives."

"How many women does he say were present?" she asked, something in her expression seeming half-finished.

"I believe…" he consulted the printed text on the flyer, "ten or so."

"Ten?" her laugh - more of a scoff - startled him. "There were fifty-three."

He did not pause to consider how she would know such a thing. "So many?"

"And he calls what took place 'unpleasantness'?"

"There were arrests, after all - " he was not certain why he was attempting to defend his friend's leaflet, "following unruly violence, disturbance of the peace and citizens fearing for their safety."

"As those fifty-three are _indeed _citizens, then with that, at least, I must agree."

"What, have you read of it, already, then? And if so, where? The papers, of course, were loathe to report upon it."  
>"Sir Edward, you dear, gentle man, can you not see? I was <em>there<em>."

"There?" He asked the question, though he still had not processed her claim. "Among the - "

"Yes."

"But was that entirely safe?"

She smiled at him, and he noticed the only-just fading green of a bruise beneath one of her eyes. "The marks on my physical person would seem to say, _no_."

"Are you very harmed?" he asked, an answer to this seeming suddenly of utmost importance.

"I am bruised and scratched and my - " she cut herself off from saying 'hip', "waist has been injured, making dancing, at present, inadvisable."

"Had you known the danger into which you placed yourself?"

"It was not safe, I agree. But it was necessary that I attend."

"Why? Why you? Could you not satisfy yourself by attending a private rally among your friends and family? Among - "

"You mean to say Society? Yes, of course. I have, and I do. But in doing that I could not satisfy my own need to understand the plight of lower-class women asking for the vote; needing the vote. Could not well see what their struggles look like. And ensuring that another voice - the voice of an actual witness - _and a female witness_ - be able to be heard over, if I may beg your pardon, speculative pamphlets such as you friend has produced that will see far wider a circulation than any truth I write of it."

"You have written of it?" the start of a smile grew at his lips, overcoming his prior look of concern and bewildered confusion for her welfare.

"I have done little else these days sequestered here, but perfect and re-write my own version of events."

"May I - may I see it?"

"Of course, I should like nothing better than to show it to you," with her hand she indicated the maid bring her manuscript to her.

His eyes did not follow the maid's progress in retrieving the papers, they kept to Lady Miranda's face. "But you are well, truly?"

She smiled at him, and it seemed, for a moment, the green cast under her eye dissipated. "I shall be fine once I heal. I promise."

* * *

><p>They spoke for some time, and she gave him permission to take her manuscript detailing the events and seek a reliable publisher for it under a pseudonym; Kate Bridges. By the time he had fifty copies of it with him and he arrived back at Ashby Court to make her a gift of the first one, she was but hours away from breaking with her convalescence and attending her first ball following the incident.<p>

Her excitement over seeing a pamphlet of her very own only served to deepen the beauty of her face and complexion. She had agreed to see him in an upper sitting room, as she was being prepared for her gown and coiffure for the evening.

Seeing the delight she wore, he, who had already been delighted in the task of seeing her eloquence and first-person account in print could only smile the larger. "In three days' time I am for Guernsey," he shared with her. "Will you allow me to take several along to pass out there among the locals? They will have had little news - and much of it not reliable - upon the matter."

"Yes," she said, though he thought her response to his request a bit halting. "Yes. That would be lovely."

He hated to think that she wished her fine words to circulate only among those of the city.

To get her smile back, he attempted a light-hearted comment. "But you will have your enjoyment back, now; balls and luncheons and parties. The Season is not yet old and dying. There will still be time for you to send your ball's dance card to the young gentleman of your choice." He smiled hopefully as he said it, though he had not meant to reveal that he knew so much of Society gossip as to know that no gentleman had received her card, no man had been able to accept her invitation to become the sole partner with whom she might keep company, from whom she might entertain an offer of marriage.

She stood at this, though slowly, almost reflectively, and moved toward the door.

He stood as she went.

"Yes, I could do so," she told him, when she was but an arms'-length from the sitting room door, "but the gentleman I would wish to send that card to…he did not sign it."

A short moment passed. Though looking at her, his mind filled to screaming with questions no one asked in politely reserved society, it seemed far longer.

"Good evening, Sir Edward," she said exiting the sitting room and terminating their interview. "In all your help you have been…most kind."

He may have echoed her 'good evening'. Later that night, he could not recall.

* * *

><p>Four days later, well-past his expected departure date for Guernsey, he found himself again in the growing-familiar foyer of Ashby Court. Ashby Court, which once again appeared to have been besieged by a floral army, blooms bursting forth from every nook and cranny in celebration, he intuited, of Lady Miranda's return to the social activities of the Season.<p>

As he stood among the heady blooms and fragrance, he thought - if only for a moment - of Guernsey, and though he did not usually long for a relaxing in societal strictures, he did allow himself to wish Ashby Court were located there, located somewhere one might more easily speak freely with a lady, might meet on more casual grounds.

He knew, as any orator might, exactly what he _wished_ to say to, to ask of Lady Miranda, only he did not have any idea how he thought he might actually do so. And in that, he had no idea what he was doing here. Only, that he could think of nowhere else to go to settle his now-fragmented, questioning mind.

He was not, to his dismay, asked to the intimate upstairs sitting room, a locale over days past in which he had come to feel some level of comfort and familiarity.

He was shown in to a formal first level parlor instead. There was an impressive concert-sized harp by the piano, and a recently-finished formal portrait displayed not on the wall (yet) but upon a decorative easel.

It was Lady Miranda in her Court presentation gown, where she had stood in the fine afternoon light of this very room to have it painted.

He successfully resisted the urge to touch it, reproaching himself for having no clear memory of her presentation at Court, the occasion upon which she had worn the gown.

_You are foolish, and past the age at which these things come naturally,_ he told himself. _Past the age where recovering from such passions, such flights of fantasy, is more easily done. Excuse yourself, _his mind told him,_ before you make an idiot asking a question there is no way in which __you__ can be the correct answer._

But he had no time to abscond. His back was still to the doorway when she had entered through it.

"You have not left London!" he heard her exclaim, though he did not know what to make of the breathlessness with which she said it. "Not gone away as you said you'd planned…"

"No," he turned and replied. "No, I have not gone." And then he didn't know what next to say. He glanced over to the painting, hoping, perhaps, to form a sentence or observation about it.

It was useless.

She had seated herself most delicately, her posture perfection, her back parallel to the seat's, but nowhere near touching it; perched, as young ladies were taught to do, upon the seat pillow. She appeared attentive, but also somewhat unusually flushed.

But of course a gentleman did not reference or ask about such a thing. This was not the upper sitting room, where he might ask after her woundings, her temporary infirmities. This was the formal drawing room.

"I see you are once again over-endowed with flowers," he said, for lack of appropriate words on any other subject. "How pleased you must be."

She did not respond, but met his eyes only for a moment and then cast hers away.

"My father is home," she finally said. "He will be pleased that you have stayed in town," she told him, and then, as if in the same breath - as if she needed to tack it on to something appropriate in order to throw off the scent of impropriety in its inquisitiveness, she asked, "why did you not go? Not keep your appointment on Guernsey? What business has kept you here?"

"Business," he echoed her. "What business…" He gave himself a mental shake about the shoulders and lightly cleared his throat. "It is, rather, erm, I must say to you…Lady Miranda," and he let himself look at her, not her portrait, not in stolen glances across a ballroom - not in the too-close-for-easy-viewing hold of a dance, but really look at her, "you have broken my life."

He watched for a moment to see what effect such outrageous a claim might have upon her.

"It is a most-unexpected development, to be certain. I was a happy man, contented. I found myself in need of very little. And yet, you have ruined all that."

He thought he saw the corners of her mouth pull slightly up. At least she had not begged him to stop this nonsense. He very much needed to get it all out, leave no word of it unsaid.

"And what is even more wondrous, more surprising," he went on, "Is that it appears you are also its only anodyne. That you are at once both the injury and the panacea. That is all I know. Had I left for Guernsey I should have arrived there wounded, my life broken - with thoughts for nothing else but you. And I find I have no wish to be there, when I can be here. Near you."

He willed himself to smile, not realizing that he already was.

Her eyes had begun to shine, and in his conclusion he realized they were shining with rising, unspilled tears.

"And you see," she began in response, as though she had already been at explaining something, "I had ordered flowers from just your home, there - Barnsdale House they said it was named - so that even in your absence from London I might feel as though you and I were near to each other. They are your flowers - all of them Nighten flowers, island flowers - though you never bring me any of your own. They are yours, arrived this morning. All of them; yours."

The room seemed abruptly to have less air than his lungs required. His tongue felt almost as though he might taste the very scent of those flowers. That ridiculous abundance of flora exploding from every possible spot.

"And the signature? Missing from the dance card?"

There it was, the question that had tormented him for days, since she had first mentioned an absence upon that sacred document.

"You did not sign it, my darling, my beautiful Edward. How, then, would it be sensible for me to send it to you? I thought its absence possibly purposeful, a way to say you were no longer disposed toward marriage - " Not waiting for him, she rose to where he stood and deposited her hand into his. She wore no glove this afternoon, and the touch of her bare skin for the first time upon his was a sensation he would not soon forget.

Uncharacteristically he did not wait for her to finish, but broke in on her speech: "So then I am not to be disappointed…"

She gave his hand a squeeze, and he felt his own hand respond instinctively to her warm, welcome touch.

"I think you must speak to my father as soon as can be," she said, in her face something no painter could ever capture. "He is alone in his study even now."

He could not dismiss the concern growing upon his brow. "And yet, could he possibly be prepared for such a call?"

She shook her head to tell him he need not worry about the reception he might receive. "He has never yet refused me any true wish of my heart. And this? This is now, and shall always remain, the truest."

Air seemed to have abruptly returned to the room in a great gust, his lungs felt swollen with it. He thought - he wondered - if he might dare.

But he needn't have. Without giving _him_ time to bring her hand to his lips, she had brought the softness of her pale, pinked cheek to his knuckles.

"I am older than your father," he said, his tone for the first time truly halting, as though such a statement ought be entered into the record.

"Then how," she asked, jollity in her tone, though he could not see her eyes, "how shall he ever find it within himself to refuse you?"

And with the back of his hand still in her hers - pressed against her cheek, he felt her smile begin before it bloomed, like a Guernsey rose, upon her blessed face.

* * *

><p><strong>CANADA - British Columbia - 1955 - <strong>"I will never dance to Tommy Dorsey," Djak said, refusing to be cowed by the emotion roiling in Wills Reddy's dear, familiar eyes.

"And yet you have!" he cried foul, half-breathless with intensity. "You have! How can you ever forget it? I know I shall not - shall never!"

"No, you are right," she agreed, purposing to speak on in composed, logical tones. "I did. _Once_. In that place where we were not who we are now - nor who we were before it. On Sark, where the world, for all it had done, all it had taken from us could not that day touch us in any other way than that of a blessing. Of joy and happiness. Yes, that day, I danced."

His mouth had closed, but his eyes never stopped speaking. Never stopped calling her out for what she had given him: her final answer.

"And I will dance once more," she spoke, once again trying to ease him into understanding and accepting the choice she had made. Needing, if not his blessing, at least his understanding. "With the women, at my wedding."

As with any argument with him, there were stormy sections, and long passages of silence where he seemed to either be working to compose himself or stirring his anger to a fuller boil.

"Don't do this," it was a calm pleading this time. "Not to us. Not to - not to - not to _me_!" His speech was slow and often halting, likely because of the tremendous effort it was taking for him not to shout. Or wail. He thought, of course, that she did not know what she was doing to either of them by making the decision she had, but he was wrong.

"No," she disagreed, calling his view of the situation incomplete. "I don't do this to you. But I do this _for_ me, and because you love me, William, because you do - you will not ask me to decide otherwise." She raised her eyebrows in hopes.

"He is not even your uncle!" Reddy half-wailed. "Did you even know his name before the war? Had you two any connection of any kind before then?" It was his own line of logic he expected to turn her with.

"Hush. You are upset - and rightly so - but Bassatte _is_ my family, and I am his. You and I, we looked far and wide, we searched and prayed and wept and studied until we find him here. And he accepted me as his daughter." Her words again were slow, reasoned. And not out of the necessity of language. Years ago she had mastered his English well enough to converse - and even argue - in it. The words she spoke were weighty, and well-thought-over, and required a slowness, a deliberateness to relate. "If you will stop thinking of your own disappointment, I know you know what that meant to me - that the head of a family would take me in, after all that my life had become, after all the transgressions against me and upon me and upon our special ways, and he yet would accept me as his daughter, a member of his household, of his clan, as a woman of the Rom - this was such a prayer for me - a prayer I was too afraid, often, to pray even silently, much less speak with my tongue."

His eyes welled up. It was not the first time during this encounter. He did know all those things - felt all those things as to the quick nearly as much as did she. If anyone besides her understood these things, these longings, it was Wills. But he shook his head. One long, definitive shake. "Being part of his family does not mean you have to do this." His lips came together, pressed hard closed.

"This is a great honor, that he has found another of our kind that will agree to marry with me. And I will marry him." She felt she needed to add something more to her decision. "_Gladly_ I will marry him. And if God wills, we will together raise up children in the memories of my brother, of my parents, his parents - and our people whose lives were taken from them. Perhaps God will not so will it. I do not know - but I do know that if I am with you, this will not be possible."

Here, he reacted as though physically wounded. "That God will not allow you children with me?"

"No!" she could not well manage to speak in the presence of that face. "Children who are Rom. Children of _my_ people, of _my_ kind. Any family you and I might have - what would it be? It would be _other_ - not Rom, not Gadjo - " her voice trailed off, as her own tears threatened. She worked to regain her composure, worked against her desire to take him into her arms, knowing that as the cause of his pain she could not truly be succor for it as well. "I am again Seraina, Wills. And I never thought I could be her again. But here, here I have found a way. I have found what there is of the family I had lost."

"And so you choose to lose me, to lose the family you had already gained," his conclusion was bald, his voice low and tone final with hopelessness.

"No! No! When you are calmer, you will think more clearly. I have been like broken, damaged for so long. You, above all others - how can you try to shame me for seeing a way to stitch my person back together? The cuts, the mismatched edges will still be there - but there is a chance to return to what I know is being whole."

"Your uncle likes me," he let his voice attempt a wheedling tone.

But she had to turn it away. "He likes you as friendly Gadjo. This is not the same as liking you as my husband."

"I can convert."

"And have you lose your own family?" Her brow deeply creased. "No."

"I have only my brother left, a distant cousin or two, a maiden aunt."

"And you must not lose them," at any other time she would have lifted her hand to his temple, smoothed his own creased lines there. "Not because of me, not because of your present state of passion."

A long silence fell. The sound of a radiator ticking as the water in it rose in temperature was the only sound between them.

Out of the silence she began again. "Were you to be Rom you could not entertain business associates in your home, you could not - " but she stalled out on the rules of Rom society and culture, there not being time to name them all, and some of them Wills knowing by now as well as did she.

"You will not marry me."

"It can be no surprise to you, Wills," her voice now was almost like a cry, there could be no doubt that what she had to say had been the cause of great anguish equally to her. "I have never once agreed that I should, in all your askings, all these years."

"And yet we have often lived and traveled as though we were so," he needlessly reminded her of their life together.

"It is true. I do not deny it; Bassette himself knows enough to understand this about us. But this part of us is over now. I will keep myself apart for this man of Bassette's choosing from today until I am wed."

"And you will honor your vows to him. To God," he had no doubt of it. "And I am meant to forget you, to stop loving you."

"Yes, I will," she agreed with his assessment of her plans. "And no, you are not."

"What, then," he asked in angry confusion, he had fallen back into a seat, and looked as though he might any moment tear at his hair. "Am I to stay around, mooning over the woman I could not win?"

She smiled, her lips closed, her eyes brimming, but not spilling over. "Never forget me, Wills. I will never forget you. I will love you always, until the day my soul is parted from this body. Love me enough to admit that what I am choosing is a happiness for me - of a kind I never believe I would know. _Be happy for me_. Love me as I love my parents, as I love my brother - though they are parted from me. But love me also by finding someone for your own, to raise a family, to have children you can teach to love and value my children, to protect the world from all we have together seen."

Somewhere in her speech he found he could no longer keep eye contact with her. His world seemed crumbling, his footing, once so sure, so solid, no longer dependable. "I will never be happy again," he declared. "Not without you."

"You will. I know," she promised him. "For I know your heart," her fist went to her chest. "You will learn to be happy for me, for what you - yes, you - found for me here, in my uncle. You will learn to be happy again in the way we did during the war, when things were dark and food grew scarce and we watched death at every turn, and discovery haunted our steps. And yet we found happiness still, lurking among the cracks. You will dance again, Wills Reddy. _You_ will dance to Tommy Dorsey."

* * *

><p><strong>SARK - La Salle's Tenement - Early Spring 1946 -<strong> "'Wish Dale and the rest could be here," Iain Johnson mused as he looked into the bonfire La Salle had directed them to light.

"You've got Wills, after all, John - you've got me."

"Aye, Mitch, you have both come, and good that, but t'would be nice to have us all together one more time, Djak leavin' and all."

"But that's the very thing, isn't it?" Wills asked, moving over toward their conversation. "It'll never _really_ be all of us again. Royston lost, Carter - what part of us he ever was anyway - never heard from again. We'll never be six. Best to just be glad to see us two, and for La Salle to have Madame safe back home before years' end."

"I shall miss her, I shall, our Djak," said Johnson, who had spent the longest and most intimate amount of time with the escaped Gypsy prisoner, as she had stayed on at La Salle's after liberation.

"She can always visit," Wills, there to help Djak usher in the next stage of her life, promised.

"She can come and stay with Eva and me at Barnsdale!"

"Not very likely with her plans," Johnson countered.

"Plans?" Mitch asked, "Has she so specific an itinerary?"

"We are for the Continent," Wills told him, "to search as we might, for what may be left of her family."

"We're none of us so stupid to think you havena already done your share of digging on that front, Wills…so what're the odds you'll find anything?"

"You have asked Robin for his help?" Mitch, not much in touch with Robin, and more than a little dismayed about it, inquired.

"Oxley's not about much - whatever they've got him doing nowadays," Wills explained. "But yes, I asked, and he ran some names for me, but anything I tend to give him seems more likely to show up on camp rolls than on any country's post-war census. I've a possible, faint lead or two. We shall pursue those first. Whatever comes of it, it will take time."

"She's been a fine worker in her time here, and more than a companion to us, hasn't she, John?" La Salle had found his way over to them.

"Well, I liked her best from the beginning," Much bragged, "from the moment I ushered her away to Abby Rufford's with Carter."

"I do not recall you liking the nits she brought with her very much," Wills attempted to pop his bubble.

John gave a hearty laugh and Wills had a go at bursting the former medic's as well. "Nor did you take any enjoyment in your discovery of her true identity that day!"

And they all laughed.

A moment passed, and Wills wandered back toward the farmhouse, the twilight now fading to the point the fire's growing blaze took true hold of the tableau in front of the former members of Unit 1192.

Several minutes passed until they could hear the kitchen window scraping open, and the new wireless - a gift from Oxley - did what it could to pour its volume out of the house and onto the yard where they sat. It was a BBC programme of music, Tommy Dorsey and his Orchestra currently playing in concert.

Djak came out of the farmhouse, and for the first time she saw the pile of wood that had been growing for better than a month finally lit, a blaze licking up toward the stars. Her face shone in the light of it, but also in another, inner light. For so many years, wood and other tinder so scarce, no such fire had been possible, the bonfires of her youth but cold memories locked in her mind.

"Oh, yes," said John, pulling a small packet from the inside of his light coat. "Was supposed to give you this tonight. Came for you, care of me - with Dale's good wishes."

Djak thanked him with a nod and set to unwrapping the brown paper. Out fell a short, though lovely, string of pearl-like beads.

Mitch found he could not keep his shock and amazement to himself. "Why - well, surely, surely they must be paste. Certainly - why - I - John, Wills - they can't - " and his bluster carried on, growing quiet after a bit as the others paid him no mind, but instead praised the pretty necklace, and shortly saw to it Djak had it clasped 'round her neck.

"And this is from Robin - or at least so says the card," Wills now offered a larger, flat package, tied up in string, "I never managed to find him at home or in-office to speak with about tonight one way or the other."

The pause here in the action was brief, but recognizable to all. Robin Oxley had not returned himself to Sark nor any Channel Island since he was carried onto His Majesty's hospital ship after liberation in May 1945.

Not a soul present held this fact against him.

Djak, following the possibly pearl necklace, hardly knew what she might expect next, the concept of presents a little foreign to her, the notion that she might have done anything to deserve gifts this night possibly even more so. La Salle held the package whilst Djak tore open the wrapping slowly, nearly causing Mitch to snipe in tense anticipation of what lay within. She put her hand in among the paper's folds and withdrew a fine, elegant cloth from off a bolt, lovely and understated in its pattern and weave, and perfect for just the sort of clothing she would shortly be in need of, having left the small, backwards island and farm.

Again, compliments rang out all 'round.

"Well, then," said Mitch - perhaps more loudly than was necessary for so intimate a gathering, "as you are to stop-over on Guernsey with Eva and myself before you sail, we have left our present there - which is, in fact, to be a hat of your own choosing, at any of the shops. _Any_." He repeated for emphasis. "Assuming you - plan to start dressing again like a proper girl?"

Djak, more than familiar by now with his ways smiled. "When the occasion suits," she assured him, looking down at the presently modified overalls she wore for farm work.

"We shall miss you, Djak," La Salle said, in his blindness unable to see even the lightness of the bonfire, but well able to sense both its height and width in its warmth.

"I have thought and prayed about it," La Salle went on, "and I wish to gift you something more in addition to your wages here. Because you have meant so much to us all - to the farm. Because you have our love," said Stephen, never one to shy away from sentiment. "And though you may have blessed us for staying here for as many years as God would give you in this life, our hearts are likewise as blessed to see you leave us to search for your family."

"Is it to be _very_ much, do you think?" Mitch tried to whisper to John to get an answer, but received only a side-scowl in reply.

"It is my last night here," Djak said, as if she had not fully realized it until now.

"Come on, then," Mitch said to her and grabbed her hand. She smiled strongly in return, matching the grin on his own face, shadowed in the moonlight, and he swept her into a couple's dance hold. And if they were a clumsy pair whirling 'round the bonfire, it was strangely not on account of Mitch's damaged gait which required he use a cane in most activities. In fact, his gait seemed abruptly smooth and quite reliable. Very like the Mitch of old, back in London, best man to Robin Oxley - fit for any nightclub dance floor.

But Tommy Dorsey was not a rhythm Djak felt naturally, and after several wild, giggling turns she found herself once again among the others.

"Teach us one a' yours, then," John bade her, and the wireless indoors proved easy enough to ignore as she took him by the hand and showed him the simple steps in a centuries-old dance, that required no partnering, only one hand to hold another, and perhaps a kerchief for good measure.

Soon enough she had Mitch and Wills joining in as well, a jolly foursome ringing the fire, their faces warm with the exertion and the blaze's heat.

BBC Radio announced the final selection in their program, and without intending it, Djak found herself left only with Wills, and found both hands filled with his. Still she smiled, though he had changed their gypsy dance into something quite different there almost on the backside of the fire.

"What now," La Salle asked quietly of Johnson, watching on happily next to him.

"Wills is kissin' her," John reported.

"Well, yes," La Salle said, with a smile and a nod. "Yes, of course."

* * *

><p><strong>GERMANY - Cuxhaven outskirts - 1945<strong> - "And then the terrible, vengeful Sheriff had the crafty wise woman ducked a THIRD time into the lake!" Anneke heard just before a dousing dose of water was dashed over her head and shoulders where she sat in the tin washtub, getting the first real bath she could actually remember. She was nine, but very small for her age, and yet, already far too wise for it as well.

"Why do you do that?" she asked the women she called Mutter, in whose hands was the pitcher that had produced the dousing.

"You have to be properly rinsed," was the no-nonsense reply given.

"No, not _that_," Anneke clarified. "When you say _Jack_ - when you say Jack the Lad's name - it always sounds so - " she struggled to find the right word, "_Englisch_."

"Does it?" came the reply. "Well, I suppose that's about right, then."

"Is Jack English, then? Does he fight for the Allies, like the soldiers?"

Without answering the question, her mother admonished her as she put a towel to the girl's head. "We must learn you better English, my darling girl."

"So that I may marry a soldier? So that he will help keep us safe?"

"The more we _know_, the safer we become," her mutti said, but the tone was lighter than it would have been several weeks ago, and the child - who would only those weeks ago have been horrified at such a notion of marrying a solider (only having known German soldiers) - was far more hopeful (already) for a day when the distant idea of marriage seemed not only possible but likely.

Anneke's mother let the girl fend for herself, now, with the towel and with her clothing, and turned her attention to a far smaller tin basin and beside it, wrapped and over-wrapped as though even this late summer day might chill it, a tiny babe.

Carefully, as a footman might unwrap priceless porcelain from an overseas voyage; with great tenderness and care, she peeled the small thing out of its buffering layers and held its wee head in her hand, its small body easily balanced on the inside of her lower arm. It was a boy.

Taking a cloth (the softest she could find) and wetting it in the water, squeezing out the excess in her only fist free for the job, she began to wipe and blot it along the baby's skin.

Looking at the basin (though hardly nice enough for the job of a bath, much less anything else) she thought of her brother, far away - her brother who now might well have the knowledge that the world held his son, perhaps had even met him. But knowing that baby Seth would have had no father present at his Christening, only Eva.

Eva was a mother without a father for her child.

She stopped for a moment (Anneke did not even notice her pause, though she was looking on with interest in this first-ever full bath for Luka) and took strength in that. In having become - now more than ever - like her friend, tackling a similar task, taking on a similar job.

And perhaps it was, for her, like a baptism for Luka, not into a church (even churches were no longer safe places to be in this uncertain fall-out of war in this defeated countryside), not into her heart (he was already well-established, there) - but into her family, such as it had become.

She heard the boys in the small room next door, what stood for their play never as boisterous as that of other children, children unaccustomed to cruelty and want, who had not always to stay hidden, mute.

She saw in Anneke's camp-raised eyes that the girl, too, noticed that as Luka was washed, dirt came off of him, stealing ounces from his negligible body weight.

"Stay with me," Anneke abruptly asked, more than a little like an unplanned proposal of marriage.

It did not take the woman she thought of as her mother as much by surprise as such a proposition might have in another world, at another time.

"As long as ever you wish it," she promised, her words steady and even, and true.

"Is Luka dying?" the girl asked, then, in response.

"I think; no more so than you and I," the mother replied, without embellishing the truth or attempting to put a happy face on such real and immediate concerns. "But if he is - if he is not meant to long be with us, then as Sister Freya says, we shall send him to Heaven knowing something of kindness, so that he will not feel a stranger there."

"I love him," the young girl announced, without condition or reservation, and no less impassioned continued: "I love you."

"Yes," said the woman Anneke thought of as her mother. "_Always_."

* * *

><p><strong>BRASIL - Salvador de Bahia - Hotel de Coracao - 1954 -<strong> He had not expected her to be awake.

As Allen Dale stood, concealed upon the hotel room's balcony, watching Eleri Vaiser dress and put herself to rights, he had to confess that he had given no thought to his returning to find her up and about.

_Had he expected to crawl back onto the mattress beside her? Resume the embrace he had left for his round of justice against Gisbonnhoffer?_

He knew from experience that such actions as the past hour had seen him take would not allow him to fall back to sleep, and what was more important, he knew he should not. Now was the time for discreet action, for taking leave of this country, this hemisphere.

It was unlikely the government here would wish to draw unnecessary attention to a Chilean citizen formerly of the Third Reich murdered during Carnaval. Gael de Lisbon had met with an unfortunate end, the local police would inform his family. He would be buried. Interest in the event, in his misfortune, was unlikely to be robust, any of his compatriots with greater worries by far about protecting themselves and their families rather than setting out to revenge his ignominious end.

But still, best not to tempt one's fate. Dale's SIS training told him a measured departure from the immediate vicinity would be best.

No reason to linger, much less stay, certainly.

For all that he was good with words - great with words, when it came to distracting or teasing or sparring with them - true words, honest and heartfelt words were not his forte. And there was no immediate telling the mood he might find tempestuous Eleri in when he reentered the room with the bed they had so recently shared. And which he had abandoned.

He stood, silent - invisible, or at least transparent should she not know to look directly for him upon the balcony - and watched _her_.

She did the things one might expect of a woman making ready to leave an assignation before dawn's light called too great an attention to her misspent evening. She stood before the small glass on the wall and attempted to smooth out the wrinkled clump that had become the skirt of her evening gown. She shook out her hair and lay her wrap upon the top of her head as though it were an over-large scarf, meant for just such a use.

She used the side of her thumb to try and wipe away what was left - and smearing - of her eye make-up. She did all of these things in no particular hurry - and without the speed one might expect of anyone with somewhere else to be.

She stepped to the bed and he watched her bend and crane her neck to check if his duffle were still upon the floor. It was still there. Still open - the job of packing it still unfinished. She stepped over to the door. She did not trail her hand along objects in the room: the floor lamp's cloth shade, the imperfections in the plaster upon the wall, the spread upon the bed they had not even paused to turn-down; but he caught a glimpse of it in her eyes, nevertheless, recognized it for what it was.

He had seen this look before: the look of leaving somewhere important, when one was loathe to go. He had seen it in his brother Tom, as His Majesty's men had taken him into custody (and eventual incarceration), away from what had been their gran's flat. That keen, so keen, desire to make a memory of everything, like an imprint on the mind, so final was one's departure.

He had felt it once himself, just after Liberation - that last day on Sark as he traveled to La Salle's to make his farewells. He could still feel the oil cloth of the kitchen's trestle table 'neath his fingertips even now - took but a second to call it up; the smell of smoke from just that particular cooker (rarely in the end had it burned wood). The crispness still of the curtains with lace trim in the windows - unwashed for two years in a house of men and no soap to spare for such delicate tasks.

It was not until at the very threshold of the door that Eleri paused at all to linger. Her eyes closed for a moment.

S_he's at tellin' me goodbye_, Allen thought - surprised by the notion. _She's goin' forever. An' she thinks I've left her to it._

She had not been party, of course, to any explicit rendering of his earlier thoughts. Had not heard his prayer, understood the final direction of his will that night.

That he had gone to discharge the gun into Gisbonnhoffer, yes, a clever girl like Eleri would have sussed that out in moments after waking to find him (and the gun) gone. But that he intended to return - had always intended to return - intended to speak with her after - she could not know or expect this for any true certainty.

And so she was doing what one did at such a time, bed cold from the absence of the night's lover. She was reassembling what was left of her dignity, leaving nothing behind, and going.

Eleri Vaiser had grown up.

He did not wait for her to place her hand upon the knob, did not pause for her to touch her fingers to the light switch. He stepped out from upon the balcony, from the depth of its shadows, his stride full with purpose, walked to the bed and the duffle, grabbing it with efficient dispatch and letting it thump upon the bed. He did not watch for Eleri's reaction to this: both his appearance back in the room by unconventional methods, nor his immediate renewal of his earlier, interrupted packing.

A moment passed as (he assumed) she acclimated herself to his re-arrival.

"You are going," her eyes were intense, grown large in their attention to both him and his bag.

"As I was, and as now I must, even more so."

At this he looked up and nodded his head to her unspoken enquiry about the fate of Gisbonnhoffer.

She did not audibly clear her throat, but it was as if she had. "There is more for you to do, after all - on her paper."

"There is, but not here," he nodded, his hands settling on each end of the open zipper.

"No," she agreed, "not here."

"Cuba, before the States, I think," he reached for a pair of trousers.

"Cuba? I read it is a very nice island, there." She stood in the same spot where she had been preparing to leave, uncertain whether she were invited back in to the room's intimate space, or expected to hover nearby the threshold she would be expected soon enough to exit through.

"'Lotta water to cross to get there," he said, bringing his face up to meet her gaze. "That bother you?"

"Water?" she asked, and the upper half of her almost leaned toward him - but yet her feet never left where they rested. "You mean sailing or flying over water? No. But you don't like it."

"Needs must," he let himself shrug with a casualness about the subject he hardly felt. "'Can't waste half-a-year driving and on donkey-back through Central America and Mexico to get back to the States."

Her mouth fell slightly open. "How did you manage this, then?"

"Like I said, needs must," he did not mention the night terrors in advance of each trip, nor the sweats and rising panic the further out-to-sea his travels took him. "I was on Jersey, you may as well know. When I found her paper. Where I bought some land, too."

This was unexpected. "Are you going back _there_?"

"Nah," he told her. "Not anytime soon. But I, you see, I got money, Eleri. Lots of it - more than I could soon use myself. In thinking _that_ you were right," his face sort of screwed up for a moment. It was an odd confession. "An' so I bought some plots, there, on Jersey."

"Plots?"

"Well, she can't be buried proper, of course," he spoke of Anya. "Her an' the others. But I bought a handful of plots anyway. Reckoned if I come through all this alive I'd have a stone put up, her name on it. That it would be _something_. Reckoned, actually, I'd have meself put there too - solicitor in Jersey holds a letter and funds to that effect, which he'd send to an old friend of mine on Sark should he get news that the worst occurred." He said it quickly, meaning for it to sound less awkward than it did.

Her eyes flashed. "How can you speak so casually about your own burial? Do you - do you _want_ to die?"

"I dunno," he admitted for the first time. "I thought I'd be pretty right by it 'til tonight. Pretty settled with the idea that doing the work of her paper might be what gave me an exit from this world. Seemed an okay task to end on." His eyes settled on hers, the packing again for now forgotten - a shade or panto for what was really going on. "But then, tonight," he began. "I - I weren't counting on tonight. Weren't counting on a lot of things, reckon."

She assumed he merely referred to the killing of Gisbonnhoffer. "So you make for Cuba, and then - but you said you had no home at present. That you'd given up your flat in New York."

"Cuba's the best place to change an identity," he reasoned, "before customs and immigration."

"You're changing your identity?" she asked, and her eyes shot from side to side, her ears taking in the still low-playing wireless meant to frustrate anyone trying to overhear. "Should you be telling me this? What if I am questioned? Is it not better if I can say I don't - "

Not addressing her fearfulness, he continued, almost to himself, "You'll have to travel on your papers until then. Makes no sense to try and pay for new ones to use for a few hours at most, wait to get them and lose cash we may need later for bribes."

Her face turned to an expression of nervousness to confusion. "_My_ papers? Me?"

"You can't get into the US on whatever papers you carry now - " he told her, "whatever name is on _them_. 'Can't risk that alias is known in the intelligence community. Can't use your true identity to try and get let in either. We'll have to marry before that, in Havana."

She said nothing, only watched him, her eyes restless, questing to see something, to catch some gesture that might prove in tune with what her ears thought they had just heard.

But he did nothing except resume his preparation, changing his shirt.

When she did speak, it was rushed - as if she feared not being allowed to get it all out before he announced she was mistaken: that she wasn't to come along. "We can take the car tonight - it has plenty of gas to take us quite far," she began to plan. "I can sneak back to the penthouse - anyone left at mother's party will be passed out to insensible if they are still there - and if we wait just until the banks open I can withdrawal the balance to close out my account."

"No," he said.

But she refused to believe it was a no to her going along, to a Havana wedding. "No?" she did not throw a fit. She was very reasonable, very flexible about the plan. "Very well, I can buy what clothes I need, and skip the penthouse." Her face was bright, hopeful, ready for approval, for verification: he was taking her with him. To Cuba. To the United States beyond. She was going with him.

"No to it all," he said. "Can't be done."

Her jaw fell open as one's might when hearing devastating news, but he spoke on so soon after, she had not time for her recently-raised hopes to be fully dashed.

His voice was all plan, all practicality. "The Tucker stays here. We'll gift it to a man I know as partial payment for gettin' us out of the country. If you're coming with, you can't go back to your mum's flat. Can't risk it. _It's a great bloody risk_, and if you're coming with me I can't have you take it. And the money? YOUR money? Stays here. Every red cent. Can't go givin' your family and any friends Gisbonnhoffer might have reason to come after us, and you don't want that money, Love, knowing where it has come from, and how it was got."

She looked back at him. He could feel she wanted to argue the point (defiance was her native state, after all), but at the same time he could see that she was going to agree with him. She had wanted for so long to escape here. He needed her to let him make these decisions: to lead for right now. He needed her trust.

And he didn't want to argue with her. And not only because there was no time for it.

"But what shall I do about clothes?" she asked, her hand to her formal gown.

He pulled out the trousers and plain shirt she had worn on more than one occasion when they worked upon the car. Pulled them out just enough so that she could see their corners and recognize them. "_That_ we gift along with the car. Wear it 'til then, and leave the hotel in it alone, just as you were about to do."

"None of my clothes?" she asked, though thankfully not in anger, only for clarification, "Of my things?"

"It's an easy choice, Hen: stay here, with your things - or go." His voice came out sounding far more cavalier about his investment in her decision that he actual was. He zipped the duffle.

Her throat went dry. She well knew she valued none of her things so much as her freedom. She had had long, lonely years to understand that. But she also knew she needed to understand the terms earlier stated by him. "Go. And agree to marry you?"

He gave a very Gallic little half-shrug. "I can see no other way 'round it, to get your phony alias documents turned into bonafide papers and get you safely into the States. But understand:" he warned, "I've divorced once before, and I don't mean to again. No matter the reason." His demeanor had become very serious, very final, but also, in a way, suppliant. He wanted her to understand because her agreement with it mattered.

"Do you mean, do you mean to live…as married people?"

"Wot, _with all my worldly possessions do I thee endow?" _And here there was a slight tug of humor about his mouth. "Up to you to decide that bit. I'll be your husband. You can decide how much a wife you wish to be to me."

She thought she could have stood there, him looking at her, for a full year and never grown tired. But he looked away before she did, as he grabbed for the handles of the bag he had just packed.

She knew they had no time. Someone could be looking for him, or her, even as they stood here still in this room that had grown to feel like a sanctuary for her. "I want children," she said, to the top of his head where he had bent to re-tie a lace on his shoe. Her voice came out unsteady, awkward.

She saw the tension of surprise spring into his shoulders. But it didn't last. A shock - a point he had not considered, perhaps, but not one to which he was opposed. "Children? Yeah. Right. Right. Little 'uns." He gave a slight nod.

But in this moment when they were explicitly discussing such things, she needed to learn something more before she agreed to Havana. No, not that she would not agree to marry him. She knew she already had, days ago. Forever ago. But she wanted to know what it meant to _him_. He appeared so noncommittal about whether she would take this marriage he had planned for them truly to heart. _Did that mean her full participation in it didn't really matter as long as they stayed wed on paper? By rule of law? _

"But why?" she heard herself asking. "What's changed that you will take me with you? Tonight - _that!_? That doesn't always change things for very long. You could see me as far as Cuba. I could stay on there, make a life for myself. You could - you could go home, leave me behind. Why marry me? Is that not an extreme solution to a quandary the next few days may sort out for us as we think more upon it?"

She was not truly trying to dissuade him. But she had to know. "Why go so far as to _marry_ me?"

He looked at her with a bemused expression. _Very well, if she needed it put into words. _"Why marry you, Ellie? Why take you home to the States with me and become your husband? Make a new life without trying to keep covering over the old one? Huh?" Again, that shrug. He had a look on his face, like he understood why she needed to hear his reasoning, but that it saddened him somewhat that she did not already know it, was not able to understand and articulate it intimately herself. But they had never before spoken to each other so.

"'Cause you ran over my foot," he told her. "And meant to do it. "Cause you read through all those blessed books I left you alone with. 'Cause a few hours ago, you understood, and gave up your claim on Gisbonnhoffer - and let me." His eyebrows raised, and his smile came out. "Be my only girl, Ellie. My girl, from now on. Look at you. Look at me. You already are. Say yes," his eyes stayed shut on the blink just an instant longer than usual, "and I'll spend the rest of my life working to make sure you don't regret the decision."

She watched him intently as he spoke. As soon as he finished (and she was certain he had finished) she said nothing, but turned, somewhat abruptly, putting her hand to the doorknob, as if she would not wait a second longer to begin their journey. Over her shoulder she asked, "And when we get away from here you will take some of this money you speak of and get me some pretty clothes?"

He was stepping now toward the direction of _his_ exit: the balcony. He grinned. "Once we're away from here you'll have anything you may like. A _field_ of cars if you like."

"And I will be the one to see to it one day you are carried away to Jersey and buried?"

There was no time for it, really, to feel this way in the face of needing to flee Brasil. "No. Not anymore. Not now," was what he said, seeing in his mind's eye that Jersey cemetery where he'd invested in those plots of land, and then realizing now - with no small amount of surprise - that he was no longer planning on his own death.

It was, in general - in the spy game - seen as dangerous when any operative found reasons in their life to hope for self-preservation. Anything one might wish to live for being a greater influence than completing the present mission might cause said operative to flinch at the wrong moment, might cause a pulled punch, prevent being wholly present in the fight. But Allen Dale found he didn't feel that way.

He would continue to revenge Annie. His vow to her - to her paper - was no less profound than the one he now knew he was shortly to make with Eleri. And that Eleri need not be ignorant of Annie - of her life and his part in it, it felt of freedom: sweet, right, and liberating.

He was nearly to the balcony doors, bag in hand. There was no time for kissing, no time to drop to one knee and pitch his suit (had he even been the sort who might), but before he stepped any closer toward exiting the hotel's room, he retraced his steps over toward her, and saw to straightening her wrap, improvised upon her head like a woman bound for Confession, and as he did so she caught his hand-at-the-task with her own.

"No more secrets if we are to do this," she said. "I want to know everything."

"Any secret what's mine to tell is yours to know," he promised, and then clarified. "There are others what aren't mine to share. Those, you must trust me with, and be content in not knowing."

She gave a nod of agreement.

"Now, you are for the stairwell, and I - and the bag - for the balcony and a drop down to below. I shall see you at the Tucker."

It was yet dark as they stole away separately from Hotel Coracao for the last time, and yet, in days to come they would each remember something about that moment that had the feeling of a dawning.

**...TBC...**


	28. Chapter 25 - Everything on the Table

**USA - Albuquerque, New Mexico - Kitchen of O'Dell Residence - 1955** - It was finished.

Allen's story, what he had offered in explanation of his knowing that Marion had not, in fact, been killed that night on Alderney in 1944, was over.

The kitchen Allen, Robin, and Eleri occupied was nothing in size compared to the kitchens the current Earl of Huntingdon had operating on his properties, such as his country estate of Kirk Leaves. Then again, he had never spent much time in such places since he was a child. A small kitchen, meant to serve a house such as Dale's here in the American West, well, the closest he had ever gotten to that was during his time on Sark, and La Salle's country kitchen. The first time he, in his prior life among nobility had come to understand the comfort of finding a seat in such a space and sitting to talk.

But there was something about this kitchen, the air of this state-the face of Dale's wife-that set him on edge. The kitchen was fashionably appointed. It could have come out of a ladies' magazine, or a commercial advertisement on the television, so current were its fittings, its furnishings. So new, so forward-looking. And he felt himself growing older, even through his anger he felt it; the past was his domain, for so long, always looking backward, trying (only by sporadic turns) to find a way to move forward by better understanding it.

This whole pre-dawn war council would have gone down better, he did not doubt it, in an environment like La Salle's, oil lamp on the trestle table, cooker burning a fire to their backs. Not this bright, sparse, modern room of wonder. There seemed nowhere here for anything but blunt facts, unpleasant truths and coldly revealed deceptions.

Robin Oxley allowed a pause as Dale spoke his final words of the tale. A pause, as though the first act of a particularly affecting, tragic play had concluded, leaving the audience somewhat stunned in its emotional wake before the house lights came up.

The hour was still quite early. Surely no other kitchens in the housing development's cul-de-sac had their lights on.

The small notepad in front of Oxley was decorated now with new, fresh pencil marks and notations on pages not yet discolored and grown limp with repeated re-readings.

In a gesture that may have been necessary, may have only been one of nerves, Allen used two fingers to re-adjust his dark-rimmed glasses. Eleri simply stood, watching on a like a hawk, or some other airborne predator-waiting to see what the uninvited visitor sitting in her kitchen might do next. Weighing whether to interfere and when.

Allen was seated across the table-pistol still upon the lazy susan-from Oxley.

_His best mate_, her Allen had said. _His commander. Marion's husband. There was no true processing of this last information, only less than an hour ago given to her. This man-the chief player in so many of her nightmares-wed to Marion? When? How? And what did this mean to her, Eleri?_

Perhaps, that on any other night she ought not to have feared him-though the ferocious ferality barely shaded by his human face when he spoke of Marion's death belied that impulse. And that he was here, right now-like an avenging angel-only to discover that he had not been told when Allen had discovered Gisbonnhoffer's untenable truth.

So, indeed, she feared him.

And yet Allen sat, his body nearly tensionless. She stood close enough to have felt it were his muscles half-sprung, ready to fend off an expected attack, to shoot forward to regain control of the pistol. But he held no such strain within him. He had told the truth, as best he knew it. He had left nothing back in the telling. It was his posture alone that elicited any restraint in hers.

"And he is dead," Oxley asked for verification. "By your hand?"

Allen nodded, teeth to the back of his lips. "Lungs and liver, like I said. His life's blood strained through sand on the Bahia."

"And he said nothing more-"

"Could not." The man who killed Gisbonnhoffer did not explicitly mention that the Nazi lieutenant had not been permitted to even speak Marion's name again.

Robin and he shared a long, level gaze.

"Swear it upon her eternal soul," Robin abruptly referenced Eleri. "Swear that he is dead, that I shall never learn otherwise."

"He is dead, Ox," Allen told him, not taking his eyes off Robin. "I swear it upon the soul of my wife, upon the soul of Marion, and Mitch and John and Roys and La Salle. I swear it upon the soul and memory of Anya Grigorovna." But he did not stop there, "And Robin? I swear it upon the love I have for you as you sit here in my house. You may doubt me as you like on any other point, but do not disbelieve me on this. He is dead. He will never harm another being."

Robin's eyes stayed snapped to his throughout this demanded declaration.

"He knew it was you?"

Allen nodded.

Robin's tone dropped. "And so you have killed our only true witness in finding her."

The sound of Eleri's low-pitched intake of air in response to this abrupt turn in questioning was all the sound to be heard in the kitchen beyond the clock's tick.

But Allen did not allow Robin's opening a new front to unsettle him. He had been over the moments he had spent conversing with Gisbonnhoffer too many times to have missed anything that could be helpful. "I had from him all he could recall," he told truthfully, "He was angry at the time it was done. He did not remember the numbers he'd ordered put on her, nor the name of the girl whose body Ellie came across that night. He did not know the name of the camp he was sending her to, only that the paperwork stated it was to be a labor camp, in the Fatherland. In the end, he knew only that he had done it, and that it had been done. A case of _nacht und nebel_. P'rhaps he thought it didn't matter, that he was disappearing her into nothingness, would never wish to see her again. Until he changed his mind, and his mem'ry didn't have what he needed to track her down again."

"_Nacht und nebel_?" Eleri spoke up to ask. It was the first time she had heard these two words, two common _German_ words, being attached to what happened to Marion.

Unexpectedly it was Oxley who replied to her question, although he did not look at her, and his tone was one of bland instruction. "To send an enemy into 'night and fog'. A designation for prisoners thought so dangerous they were usually murdered at camps without so much as a notation by Jerry as to what became of them. To disappear without a trace. To turn into smoke; to evaporate from the earth. To become unlocateable."

His speaking _at_ her (if not looking at her) gave her a moment of courage. "There was a small assertion in the newspaper later that week about his death," she told him.

"What paper's that?"

She gave him its name. "Under Gael de Lisbon."

"And yet you say he was living in Chile?" he still addressed his questions directly to Allen.

"The hotel where his family stayed each year for Carnaval-their front desk registry-" Eleri suggested, "should show his address in Chile, shouldn't it?"

Robin scoffed, with bitter breath. "He lived that much in the open…"

"…Don't they all," Allen commiserated with a wag of his head.

Robin looked back down to his notations. "And Jarl Derheim. You know the alias he was living under, and where he is buried?"

Allen had to shrug in reply to this. He did not know, he only looked up toward Eleri.

She narrowed her eyes slightly and gave Robin a look. The fact he was not including her in any of the questions he asked was not lost on her. But she told him the alias, the rural town and its cemetery.

"So you will run that by your team in London?" Allen asked.

"They like to know when any target is taken out of play," Robin answered as her wrote.

"And what will you say about Allen?" Eleri asked, able to cage her tongue and her fears no longer. "Will these men show up here-wanting to talk with him or take him away?" _And what will they make of me?_ she did not ask aloud, but the question was there all the same. Her brows were knit, her mouth a pucker of concern.

"You are legally wed?" Robin asked, cocking an eyebrow with the question, surprising the both of them.

Allen nodded, brought a finger down to make his point upon the table's top. "Names are in a Havana church register."

"A church wedding?" Robin said, though it was not really a question, more like a light scoff, his breath behind it less bitter, but not wholly sweet.

"El'ri's choice," Allen answered reasonably, ignoring Oxley's tone.

Eleri only stiffened.

"And whose permission did you ask, then, Soldier?"

"I do not need my father-" Eleri began to huff, but Robin cut her off.

"I am asking your husband, _the soldier_. As he did not ask me, _his commanding officer_, for permission to marry, nor bother to inform me that he had. You may not be active duty at present, Dale, but you cash the checks-you are hardly without ties to SIS."

Here Allen let his annoyance (though free of anger) show. "Could I have asked you that? Could I even have told you? Or John? And not _just_ because we were in a time crunch, Ox, and we had to do it in Havana to get her into the country-change out her papers legal-like. 'Tis 'cause you would not have stood for it."

"So, again," Ox said, with an unhappy laugh, "better to conceal the truth than to face the consequences."

"That is unfair," and Allen stopped short from putting an exclamation point on his retort. Something like tension was beginning to take hold under his skin. "Did you-" and here he risked much, invoking Marion so boldly without letting Robin first reference her. "Did you ask permission to wed Marion? Did you even _bloody_ tell any one of us until the end? No."

Robin refused to be baited. "It was a time of war. Things were need to know."

Allen shook his head with disappointment at that reasonable old saw that thought it might cover a world of ills. "You better than anyone knows that war is not yet finished. You have just said, after all, that I am soldier to it still." And then he asked, his voice showing his own investment in Robin's coming answer. "Do you think I've changed so much toward you?"

Eleri wanted to lean forward, to touch his shoulder, to show in some physical way _her_ belief in him here, as he seemed to be getting taken apart by this man Oxley.

Robin let the question lay for a moment, spent that time contemplating Allen. Finally, leaned onto his elbows upon the tabletop, bringing himself closer to both Allen and the pistol. "I dunno Dale. Or should I say O'Dell? Two years ago you lived in New York, married to your dream girl, Floss," his voice spoke every line with a question and a shrug.

"Her name is Florinda," Allen said, instinctive in that response.

"Now you're 'Alan O'Dell' of Albuquerque New Mexico," Robin said it like an accusation. "You've married Kommandant's daughter, started selling cars-and there's a damned _swimming pool_ in your backyard. _Are_ you still the man I know?" He threw an open hand out with the question, and raied his eyebrows to emphasize the unlikely certainty of any answer.

Eleri's gaze on Robin was still unshakeable. She had begun to notice something under his shirt, something that swayed into his chest as he moved and breathed in the conversation. At one point the lower chest-level buttons of his pajama shirt gapped, and she caught a glimpse of what was unmistakably a woman's ring; large blue gem, and possibly ringed by diamonds, hanging from the cheap, knobby chain that a soldier's dog tags hung upon. But Allen had told her once: his unit of spies never wore identifying dog tags. If it was a woman's ring-and her glimpse of it had been brief, but still she felt certain-it was Marion's. It was Marion's ring. This rude, half-violent man provoking her Allen-This was a man Marion had chosen for herself. And as angry and rage-fueled as he seemed to be toward Allen right now-it was only from a love, a passion, that was-that had been-requited for Marion.

This man that Allen loved.

"Would the man you know have killed Gisbonnhoffer?" Eleri spoke up, unbidden to enter the battle of words. Her voice was loud, her speech abrupt, determined not to be over-spoken.

Allen's own eyes dilated with the sound of it. Robin's posture stilled, turning almost stony. "Would he have kept from me the news that Marion was not killed?" he replied to her in flawless, stingingly articulated French. His head had come up as his shoulders stiffened with his speech, and he now looked fully at her, no longer pretending (or attempting) to ignore her presence in the room.

"Did he not love you?" she asked of Oxley, also in French, her voice almost begging, though Allen sat there offering no defense for himself. Then in English she added, "Did you have his love, his loyalty?"

It was a begrudging answer when it came. "I thought I did."

"Then you do still," she told him, as sure of it as she was the beat of her own heart. She rushed on in French, hardly noticing when she did so. Words of love, of affection, always sounded better to her in that tongue. "Don't let your pain blind you to that. What was done was done in love. In care for you."

"What then, Allen?" Oxley turned back to the man across the table from him. "What if I had decided to pursue another-believing Marion dead? What if I had pursued them all the way to the altar? Would you have then given a pass to bigamy?"

Allen looked sheepish for only a moment. "But that's the thing about it, Ox, innit? You didn't. You haven't pursued another woman even so far as down the street. You been a man lost in a dark tunnel-wi' no light at the end."

"So you would have told me then? Or waited for the children to be born?"

Allen bit his lip, determined to give a sincere answer. "I dunno. Ellie's right. You've been in so much pain for so long. Makes it hard to see clearly."

Robin almost sighed, then did not. "And perhaps I would not have been in such pain had Marion truly died. Perhaps my heart was only telling me the truth-that she lived, and that I was separated from her." He looked a man disgusted with himself, having failed to give credence to his own instincts.

"And perhaps you would have been in more pain," Allen offered, "were you to discover she were choosing to stay away."

"Or that she was being kept, somehow, from you," Eleri spoke up, in misstep.

"IF that is so, then not by Gisbonnhoffer," Allen strongly interjected, throwing a dismayed glance at her.

"No," Eleri agreed, instantly understanding, instantly chastened. No. Not by him."

* * *

><p>"What will you do?" Allen asked after a few moments of no one speaking passed. He did not specify as to whether his question was in regard to Robin's belief he had been betrayed, or to his next move in the search for Marion.<p>

"We will take the first flight tomorrow-_today_-to New York, and call upon the flier," Robin flipped his notebook to a page listing the address and other personal information on Flight Commander Thomas Carter. "Debrief him again."

It was not lost on Allen (nor on Eleri) that Robin used the plural pronoun in regard to his plans, including Allen in his immediate strategy.

"Wot? Carter? No need."

"Are you now in charge of this operation?"

"Naw. No. I've seen 'im."

Robin's face, only momentarily settling with talk of what would happen going forward, threatened to re-charge with anger.

"I went to visit him before I went chasing after Anya Grigorovna. He didn't even know Marion had been taken, much less that she had been killed-was thought to have been killed."

Robin gave a skeptical glance.

"C'mon Ox-" he pleaded. "Who was always your best man for finding a tell? He didn't know. Clueless."

"What else aren't you telling me?"

"Nothing-_you have my word_-nothing that I am intentionally leaving out. I found a paper of Anya's. She names names."

"And, as with Derheim and Gisbonnhoffer you are-"

"Crossin' 'em off."

Robin gave this grim-but unopposed-consideration.

"I may be able to help with information-one or two names at a time. Nothing that might rise suspicions." He looked toward Allen pointedly. "I assume this is something you wish to manage alone."

Allen gave a nod.

"Will you tell her family?" Allen asked, meaning Marion's mother and brother.

Robin rolled the thought around for a moment before responding. "Not now. Not until there is something truly to tell."

"And you won't have a sit-down with them, go over whether they may know anything, had any sort of peculiar encounter that might in a circuitous way lead back to her?"

Robin shook his head. "Lady Nighten is very sophisticated in many, many ways. But in regard to the loss of Marion and Edward? No. She would not have it within her to conceal so great a possibility were she to have any clue Marion might yet live. She knows nothing. And Clem?" He shook his head a second time. Other than himself no other soul on earth had worked so hard to try and uncover further truth about Marion Nighten. "But I will interview others," he announced. "If, as you point out, I am so easily contactable-perhaps, perhaps something has gone awry in her attempt to contact me. Something that left her thinking I no longer-" he could not bring himself to say 'cared'. "I shall interview the Kirk Leaves staff and those serving at the Tripp."

"Does Mitch know?"

"I cabled him the news."

"He will tell everyone."

At this, Robin gave as close to a true smile as he had since arriving at Allen's home. "Have a little faith. Bonchurch is not the young man he once was."

"And the others?"

"I will contact when I need their assistance."

"So after New York you fly back?"

"Yes. And no. My contact in Kentucky-who first informed me-gave me a key to a safe deposit box at a bank in the city-where Marion left her jewels in their care before crossing back to England after our crash…There may well be some clue to be found, there."

"This Kentucky gent-he knows the name of the camp in question?"

"He was among those who liberated it. I shall also comb through whatever intelligence documents there might be of that occasion. He spoke to her, she recognized him, told him she was married, and he gave her a wallet of cash to hang onto in case she might be in need. Also, his dog tag-to help vouch that she knew him. That dog tag has not turned up again."

"Which this chap takes for meaning she's still alive."

"He does, though his own search for her right after she disappeared from that camp produced no leads. But with plenty of American money at that time, silence and stealth could have been easily bought."

"How much money, exactly?" Allen asked.

"Seven-thousand, five hundred U.S."

Allen whistled. Even he was impressed. "Did you say this contact was the _King_ of Kentucky?"

Robin gave in, with a corner-mouth smile at Allen's appreciation of Fred Otto's spare cash. "And he gave me this: he had one of his men sketch it from his description of her that day shortly after she disappeared."

He pulled a double-folded piece of drawing paper out of his pajama's breast pocket (which is a peculiar enough place to keep such a thing, but Eleri felt she understood: wanting to have it near him at all times, even in sleep), and laid it, unfolded, on the table atop the pistol.

And there she was: not like anyone present in that kitchen remembered her. But it was Marion nonetheless, headscarf, the bones of her face more prominent than they recalled. The eyes, that though it was a pencil sketch scanned brightly blue to each as they looked upon it.

* * *

><p>Oxley had excused himself, and though none of the three could possibly have expected to return to anything like restful sleep in the time before normal rising, all retired to their respective bedrooms. Allen and Eleri even found their way back to lying upon their barely-used-that-night bed.<p>

"'Should pack," he said, his breath warm against the pack of her neck.

"Depending on what he finds, you may be gone some time," she warned him, wondering if they presently had any piece of luggage that might do for a long trip. Since they had come to New Mexico they had never taken a trip anywhere, and Allen's old duffle was all the baggage they had left.

"D'ya think I'd go without you?"

Her heart leapt, flutter beat.

"But won't you? He won't have me-won't want me around."

"I can't let him go alone, can I? What does Robin know of New York? They'll have him paying three times the usual rate for a cab. He won't know where or what to eat. And some of the folk he'll meet-well, he won't even be able to understand a word they say. He needs me. But Eleri, you are my wife. And a friend of Marion. Nothing's gonna change either of those facts. Robin shall have to get used to you. To start seeing in your face not just your father, but a friend. And I would not leave you here-without knowing how long I might be gone. If we cannot find a useful situation for you once we're there, well, you must've read once or twice about the city and its museums. You won't suffer from lack of culture. Not in New York. And I shall not suffer from the loss of you."

She smiled so deeply, so satisfied into what was left of the night's dark she wondered if she might ever suffer again.

"Javier can keep watch over things here," she heard him say before she felt his kiss, felt his hands start to turn her around toward him.

* * *

><p>It was not too much later, Allen (she thought) fallen into napping, that she could hear sounds again from down the short hallway. Choked, half-gasping sounds that even in their distance shook something inside of her.<p>

"You don't hear that," Allen (not asleep) told her, though his head was half-buried in a hair and neck.

She stiffened. Of course she heard it. "Tosh," she said, borrowing one of his English words.

"No," he persisted. "You don't hear it. I don't hear it. That is a man desperate for his wife, having a private moment."

She did not agree out loud, but she let it go, tried not to hear it-tried not to further strain for it as it got softer, harder to overhear. "Do you think she's alive?" she asked him. As important as that question had always been it seemed even more important today.

Allen sighed, removing his face from her neck, rolling over onto his back. It was time to pack. "If she is," he told Eleri, "she'd best get found quick-as-you-can. She'd not wish him like this."

* * *

><p><strong>USA - 1992 -<strong> The stamps and cancellation on the envelope were colorful; exotic among the usual contents of their very utilitarian Hoboken P.O. Box. The metal door of that box with an upraised art deco motif still as bold as the day it was cast. The letter within was handwritten, and though it was easily legible, the writing had a strange exactness-a slant to it that was unfamiliar.

"_How blessed we were to receive your letter!_" it began. "_It was left in my care as the tenement to which it was addressed is my property, and Iain Johnson to whom you have addressed it-my beloved stepfather-no longer walks the fields of this earth. It is my very sincere hope that you will not be bothered in any way that it was I who opened it, nor that it is I who am responding, and with such sad news. Iain-or John, as I see you know he was called by-died some five years ago now, peacefully and suddenly. Strangely (or perhaps not so), he had been keeping his usual morning vigil at the graves of my mother and father, here within sight of our house. When he did not return to the kitchen to take his morning coffee with me, I went to find him, only to see that he was already more with my parents than he had been with them, together, in long, long years. And so it was a sorrowful moment for me, but not overly so._

"_You write of who you are as though we might be surprised by the knowledge of what took place here on our farm during the war. But you are the daughter of the flier! It is more than we would have ever expected to hear from you! The stories I heard as a child of those daring days. I can hardly number them. For several summers I was determined to steal away from all chores and make a home for myself in the mines upon the mere strength of those adventurous tales. You write about the Gypsy boy Djak, and ask if we know of any contact information for him (or, rather, her). Though she has not written to us since shortly after John's death, I am including the return address from that envelope, here. My brood and I trust this will find you and yours in the best possible health, and that the unexpected news of John's passing will not prove too much a sorrow for you. Please assure yourself that should you ever be anywhere near our island that our home is yours, that we would see it as a great honor to welcome you and your family as the family of Eagle Squadron Flight Commander Thomas Carter for as long as you might be able to stay. Signed with warmest regards and hopes that we will meet in future, Steve La Salle and family._"

Ken Armstrong held the letter away from his face after having read it. "So you're going all the way to Europe, then, Z?" he asked his wife.

The modest, second-floor bedroom they shared had long proven the only private space in their brick two-story-often the only place they could go for a truly uninterrupted discussion in a house with four active children, several pets-and until recently, one elderly-but active- grandfather.

Zara was not, as usual when they found time for such discussions, making ready for bed. She was, instead, standing surprisingly close to him-towering over him, almost, where he sat on the bottom corner of their bed, reading the paper she had given to him.

Mind you, he didn't oppose her going to Europe, but it was a long way, and what would they do with the kids? Taking them out of school during the term for an unexpected trip to Europe-what was the name of that island, again? Serk?-would be no easy feat to pull off. And how would the business fare without both of them to shepherd it? Their aviation firm had never been a large one. They had managed few enough vacations in the past. Their payroll hardly included enough people on-staff to fill the duties of the two most important cogs in that apparatus.

"No." she said. "No, not Europe. She's in Canada, it says here," she showed him the back of the letter's page, where this Steve La Salle had copied an address.

"Not _near_ Canada," he observed the words 'British Columbia'.

"How long do you think to get there?"

"Oh, it can be done. You should take Alex."

"You think?"

"He's twelve. It will do him good to have an adventure."

"You think I should let him take the stick."

Ken shrugged. "Responsibility in small doses never hurt anyone. Why, did you want me to come?"

"I don't see how we both could go…"

"And you're the one that needs to see her-to show her this-?"

"I guess you could call it a letter, though it's not exactly."

"And she's old,"

"Well, not so old as Carter, but I certainly wouldn't wish to wait to go-even in the letter, there is this John-passed five years ago. They are dying out."

"You're right. You shouldn't wait."

"I can be there and back. Four days gone at most. More likely, three."

"Speaking as co-owner? Take as long as you need," he told her, handing back the letter. "Just don't stay gone forever. I get lonely."

"What you mean is the quarterly maintenance inspection is coming up, and you don't want to be in charge of it," she quipped slyly, swatting at him with the papers in her hand.

"To each his strengths-" he replied, grabbed for her hand and using it to pull her down with him onto the bed.

**...TBC...**


End file.
